Jamaica’s Teachers Highly Trained

Education, Youth and Information Minister, Hon. Fayval Williams, says that Jamaica boasts a high percentage of qualified teachers in the public education system.

“We have… trained university graduates, trained college graduates and trained instructors,” she said, while making her contribution to the 2021/22 Sectoral Debate in the House of Representatives on Wednesday (April 28).

She said that these highly qualified teachers and instructors span the early-childhood sector through to the high-school level, pointing out that “we have 92 per cent trained teachers in the government-run infant schools”.

The Minister indicated that “the only place that we have a high level of untrained tertiary-level graduates is in our polytechnic schools”, adding that “I have asked for this to be interrogated”.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Williams said Jamaica compares “relatively well” to several other Caribbean countries in terms of student-teacher ratio.

She said that at the pre-primary level (grades 1-3), Jamaica averages 11 students to one teacher, compared to 16:1 in Barbados.

“We are not that far off when we look at primary education (grades 4-6) and secondary or high school. This is not to say that there aren’t schools that might have 30 or 35 students in a class… [But] these figures are average across the education sector,” Mrs. Williams noted.