Recruitment in Education and Initial Teacher Training: A Caribbean Perspective

The need to incorporate teachers into Initial Teacher Training and Education (ITET) is a worldwide fact. However, for the Caribbean region, the challenge is made worse when viewed in light of the fact that trained Caribbean teachers are being recruited to serve in other countries and regions.

Mike Baker, education correspondent for the British Broadcasting Cooperation (BBC) in his 2002 article entitled UK ‘poaching’ Jamaican teachers, noted that between 2001 and 2002 six hundred teachers (600) left the island to work abroad, most in the United States. and the UK. During that same period, the UK government issued six thousand (6,000) work permits to teachers from outside the European Community.

The global demands for teachers, including those from the Caribbean, offer the region both a challenge and an opportunity. A challenge in that new teachers need to be attracted, recruited, educated and trained, and an opportunity in that trained teachers seeking financial independence can achieve this by practicing their craft in an economically prosperous community.

While there are many strategies to encourage ITET recruitment, given the social, cultural, political, and educational context of each Caribbean state, it is not easy to discern what will work and what will not. Based on the results of a number of regional studies, here are some suggestions.

1. Undertake innovative and strategic approaches to policy development in the area of ​​ITET. Policies are needed to direct actions and guide innovations, thus increasing people’s confidence in ITET’s process and product.

2. Formulate policies to address the nature and types of academic qualifications offered and the standards to which local teacher education and training institutions operate.

3. Develop policies on the recruitment process at ITET and on the promotion of teaching and the identification of appropriate target populations for recruitment.

4. Offer competitive and internationally recognized degree programs in education.

5. Develop a clearly articulated alternative paradigm for the career structure and its underlying values ​​in the region, along with efforts to improve the economic situation of teachers. In countries where teaching is considered to be extremely important, teachers are relatively well paid, so teaching is considered a relatively well paid job, the supply of new teachers is high, and there is a low attrition rate.

6. Allow ITET programs to be framed in a reflective model of teaching that encourages the development of skills and knowledge in content areas, professional studies and practical teaching, grounded in the real world of the school and the classroom.