THE REAL COST OF TEACHER TRANSFER

Many of the developed countries have policies that work well in their social situations. However, in the case of Jamaica, certain policies may not be feasible. One such policy change is the transfer of teachers from one region to another.
Majority of our teachers are settled in their jobs and have permanent homes with families. Many of the teachers have established programmes within their schools, churches and communities and dislocating them would be harmful to the beneficiaries. 

It has been said that the over staffed schools will have the extra teachers transferred to understaffed schools that are in need of specially trained teachers. Therefore there are some questions that need to be answered; a) is the Ministry of Education (MOE) going to provide accommodations for these transferred professionals? b) will affordable or alternative transportation be provided for those teachers who will have to travel longer distances? c) will there be a change in remuneration for the proposed transferred teachers, and d) where is the empirical data that supports the idea that the transfer of teachers will improve instruction and learning outcomes? And there are still more questions!

However, there are some cost effective suggestions that the MOE can employ: a) strategically increasing the amount of students to improve the student teacher ratio, b) direct the teachers’ colleges to reconstruct their programmes according to the needs of the schools in the different regions so that the schools that are in need of subject specialist will be supplied as soon as there is a vacancy, and c) the MOE needs to install an online student-teacher census management system that is updated each term by each school administrator in order to provide the ministry with updated information. This can facilitate easy access to updated information on each school. This way, the MOE will have better management of teacher deployment in the various regions when new teachers apply for a teaching position.

There are better ways in dealing with the issues of teacher transfer. Some policies that are good for some countries are not ideal for Jamaica therefore care must be given before implementing changes that may end up being “penny wise and pound foolish.”