BASSETERRE, ST KITTS, 3 September, 2023: The People’s Action Movement extends best wishes for the start of the new school year to principals, teachers, and auxiliary staff of schools in the Federation. This school year will see a number of unprecedented changes in the education system which teachers will be obliged to manage, yet there has been no consultation with them.
The hair policy is one of those changes that school principals were not consulted on but are expected to manage the students under their charge at the start of the new school year. Teachers have been facetiously asking the question: “who is supposed to be measuring the buns for height or who will determine that a hair braid is within the guidelines?”
Former Minister of Education, Jonel Powell has described the handling of the issues as high handed and tantamount to bullying. “The Minister of Education does not personally manage classrooms and ought not to have been judge and jury over those kinds of matters without inclusion of the views and opinions of our teachers. This is a disgusting precedent that they should not remain silent on,” he concluded.
While the Minister of Education has made matters of hair a priority, students and teachers are returning to many of these schools without desks and chairs and roofless bathroom facilities. Resources like toilet paper, markers and other school supplies are scarce to nonexistent mere days before the school gates open on Monday 4th September.
The current Minister of Education has kept none of the promises made to teachers concerning their allowances and talk of a new deal which he used to entice their votes on. As for the laptops, there has been no announcement as to their distribution or who would qualify to receive them.
In the meantime, teachers are being shifted without justification to new schools and will have to make major adjustments in a few days.
The PAM stands in solidarity with our teachers in this most challenging time and assures them of their support in any way possible to ease the strain created by these unilateral measures.
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