Vi­jay Ma­haraj

The Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (TSC) con­tin­ues to in­flict great harm on the na­tion’s ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

A hol­low court judg­ment on be­half of the TSC against the Pres­by­ter­ian Ed­u­ca­tion Board had a par­tic­u­lar mem­ber of their com­mis­sion “cock-a-hoop,” to the ex­tent that with­in hours of its an­nounce­ment, a let­ter was writ­ten to the ed­i­tors of dai­ly news­pa­pers ex­press­ing crit­i­cism of de­nom­i­na­tion­al boards, their op­er­a­tions and re­cruit­ment prac­tices.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, in her glee, the let­ter writer, Eliz­a­beth Crouch, for­mer prin­ci­pal of St Joseph’s Con­vent, Port-of-Spain and Maria Regi­na Grade School, con­ve­nient­ly for­got or de­lib­er­ate­ly omit­ted to men­tion that she is the present TSC chair, tak­ing a swipe at de­nom­i­na­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion boards of which she was once an ac­tive mem­ber.

Crouch con­tin­ues to be a vo­cif­er­ous crit­ic of de­nom­i­na­tion­al boards, to­geth­er with her cap­tious fol­low­ers, ques­tion­ing their re­li­gious com­po­si­tion.

Sec­tion 125 of the Con­sti­tu­tion is at the cen­tre of the dilem­ma:

“(125) Sub­ject to the pro­vi­sions of this Con­sti­tu­tion, pow­er to ap­point per­sons to hold or act in pub­lic of­fice in the Teach­ing Ser­vice es­tab­lished un­der the ed­u­ca­tion Act, in­clud­ing pow­er to make ap­point­ments on pro­mo­tion and trans­fer and to con­firm ap­point­ments, and to re­move and ex­er­cise dis­ci­pli­nary con­trol over per­sons hold­ing or act­ing in such of­fices and to en­force stan­dards of con­duct on such of­fi­cers shall vest in the Teach­ing Com­mis­sion.”

This sec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion grants al­most ex­clu­sive ju­ris­dic­tion and con­trol to the TSC over the most sig­nif­i­cant el­e­ment of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem—the em­ploy­ees. The per­for­mance of em­ploy­ees is the most im­por­tant com­po­nent if we are to achieve a high-per­form­ing ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

Giv­en the TSC’s poor per­for­mance, it is in­cum­bent on the na­tion to un­der­stand that the TSC, es­tab­lished in 1968, has long out­lived its use­ful­ness.

“The framers of the Con­sti­tu­tion had the ob­jec­tive of es­tab­lish­ing non-po­lit­i­cal bod­ies with the sole pur­pose of mon­i­tor­ing neu­tral ser­vices op­er­at­ing on the ba­sis of mer­it, free from pa­tron­age, dis­crim­i­na­tion, nepo­tism and in­jus­tice.”

The lead­er­ship is best ex­er­cised by the per­son en­trust­ed with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem—the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion. In fact, the same Con­sti­tu­tion, Sec­tion 85 (1), al­so en­trusts key re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to a Min­is­ter: “8.5 (1) Where any Min­is­ter has been as­signed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for any de­part­ment of gov­ern­ment, he shall ex­er­cise gen­er­al di­rec­tion and con­trol over that de­part­ment; and, sub­ject to such di­rec­tion and con­trol, the de­part­ment shall be un­der the su­per­vi­sion of a Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary whose of­fice shall be a pub­lic of­fice.”

The TSC should be abol­ished and its func­tions placed un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the min­is­ter and su­per­vis­ing of­fi­cers. The pub­li­ca­tion “The Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, The Ser­vice Com­mis­sions,” cat­a­logues a num­ber of chal­lenges fac­ing the TSC and oth­er com­mis­sions. Among these are:

Heavy work­load of the Ser­vice Com­mis­sions De­part­ment due to the fol­low­ing fac­tors:

(i) The vast in­crease in the num­ber of of­fi­cers in the Civ­il, Po­lice and Teach­ing Ser­vices;

(ii) The nu­mer­ous rep­re­sen­ta­tions and re­quests for in­for­ma­tion from pub­lic of­fi­cers through the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act;

(iii) An in­crease in the dis­ci­pli­nary mat­ters aris­ing out of al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct made against pub­lic of­fi­cers;

(iv) A growth in High Court mat­ters against the com­mis­sion and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al be­ing filed by teach­ers where they per­ceive that their rights are be­ing in­fringed;

(v) The large num­ber of Pub­lic Of­fi­cers who have court charges pend­ing against them: (the sta­tus of the court charges is mon­i­tored and if de­ter­mined against the of­fi­cers, dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion is tak­en against them).

Oth­er fac­tors are al­so not­ed:

• Num­ber of High Court mat­ters be­ing de­ter­mined against the com­mis­sions;

• Slow com­ple­tion of dis­ci­pli­nary process;

• Slow re­sponse to our clients – Need to de­crease cy­cle-time;

• Poor im­age of the Ser­vice Com­mis­sions De­part­ment.

These chal­lenges high­light the TSC’s in­ef­fi­cien­cy and in­ef­fec­tive­ness. The TSC lacks the spe­cial­ist, cut­ting-edge, in-depth knowl­edge and com­pe­tence re­quired to dis­charge its func­tions and con­tin­ues to re­cruit poor teach­ers and ad­min­is­tra­tors.

In fact, it has con­sis­tent­ly scored poor can­di­dates sim­ply as passed—seem­ing­ly ig­no­rant of the com­pe­tence, moral, eth­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al stan­dards re­quired of teach­ers and ad­min­is­tra­tors. The TSC’s part-time func­tion­ing has com­pro­mised its abil­i­ty to re­spond ad­e­quate­ly to the crit­i­cal needs of to­day’s ed­u­ca­tion de­mands.

The TSC’s self-reg­u­la­tion is demon­strat­ed through many ex­am­ples of ar­bi­trari­ness and its lag­ging and poor­ly struc­tured re­cruit­ment process places stu­dents’ ed­u­ca­tion at risk. The TSC has ve­toed de­nom­i­na­tion­al boards’ care­ful­ly con­sid­ered rec­om­mend­ed choic­es be­cause of its lim­it­ed knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence.

The in­escapable con­clu­sion is that the anachro­nis­tic, in­ef­fec­tive and in­ef­fi­cient TSC is an im­ped­i­ment to the growth and progress of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, their de­ci­sion-mak­ing and ap­point­ments are of­ten ques­tion­able and need to be re­struc­tured and new full-time com­mis­sion­ers should be ap­point­ed.