Performativity in the education system: Teachers

The discourses of the New Public Management (NPM) in Jamaica are bound up with those of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in terms of the need for fiscal responsibility in government. Jamaica’s dire financial straits have sent it to the IMF once again. With the financial assistance offered by the IMF comes advice, advice which it believes if followed, will yield much benefit to the recipient country.

The advice that the IMF is proffering to the government at this time is that it needs to urgently reduce the size of the public service. The public service, it says, absorbs too much of government’s scarce resources. The government does not have the political will to do this at this time by ridding the service of some of its personnel. What it has been doing instead as regards the advice of the IMF is trying to reduce costs in the public service by identifying areas from which resources may be saved.

How are teachers being impacted? Many teachers are disheartened by the pronouncements of the Minister of Education as regards his intention to reduce costs in the education sector. This disheartenment stems from several factors.

First, teachers’ disheartenment is primarily heightened by the expressed intention by the Minister to reduce the benefits that teachers currently enjoy. Many teachers are fuming. These are benefits that they have fought for. Moreover, these benefits act as motivation to them considering the salaries that they are being paid. A major source of disheartenment for teachers is the intention of the Minister to reform Study Leave, a benefit that teachers have enjoyed for decades.  Teachers who have worked for at least two years in the schools and are permanently appointed may be granted two years study leave, one with pay and the other without pay. While these teachers are off on study leave the Ministry hires replacement teachers who like those on study leave receive regular monthly salaries. The Minister finds this practice financially onerous on government and is intent on drastically reforming it. Teachers and their union have vowed to fight to retain what is rightfully theirs. If government must reduce costs in the system, may teachers say, they can find other areas from which to cut. Of course, many teachers cannot identify one such area.

Second,  the teacher appraisal system which the Ministry of Education instituted several years ago is another source of disheartenment for some teachers. This is a process where the principal/vice principal, the Head of department and a colleague chosen by the teacher who is being assessed enter the classroom, observe the lesson that is taught by the teacher being assessed, meets with the teacher at the end of the lesson and provide critique. At the end of the process, if the teacher concurs with the feedback that is provided by the assessors, the teacher signs the appraisal document. However, over the years a number of teachers have refused to sign these documents because they perceive their assessors (excluding their chosen assessor) to be biased in their assessment.

This perception stems from issues often related to the vagaries of interpersonal relationships in the organisations. Many teachers question the qualification and competence of those who conduct the assessments. Some teachers believe that they are more qualified to do the assessments than those who actually do them. Many teachers do not view this process as a legitimate judge of their competence as a result of the dynamics of the relationships within the organisation within which they work.

Third, many teachers believe that they are being unfairly targeted and blamed by the Ministry for the poor performance of students in the education system. Instead, they blame the policies of the Ministry of Education for the low performance. However, one principal believes that schools must take at least fifty percent of the responsibility for the performance of their students. But, in the same breath, he believes that government policies do have an adverse impact on students’ performance. This is because the policies from the kindergarten to the secondary level are not sufficiently streamlined to achieve the outcomes for which the Ministry hopes. The Ministry seems to have realised this based on the pronouncements of the Minister. So, the major players in the education system seem to agree that they all contribute to the problem of underperformance in the system in some way. However, many teachers, especially those in low performing schools are not willing to accept any responsibility in this regard.

This refusal by many teachers to accept responsibility for the poor performance of their students derives from their perception that the Ministry does not try to understand what happens in schools – the nature of the students that they have to work with, the challenges faced by schools in different communities as well as the impact on performance of the lack of resources with which they work. One teacher expresses the view that the people at the Ministry sit at their desks and rely on statistics to tell them what is happening in the education system. She says she totally disregards statistics because, in her view, they are nonsense. She believes that the statistics do not reflect the reality of what happens in the school. And, she believes that education officers are ineffective because when they visit the schools they sit in with the principals and do not get to know the teachers. She questions the closeness of the relationship between the education officer and her principal seeing this as collusion to marginalise the voice of the staff. Perception!

So, when successive Ministers who may be described as transformational leaders in the sense that they seem committed to effecting change in the education system use various media to spout their rhetoric of change, there are many teachers who listen but do not hear the substantive message embedded in their rhetoric. They do not want to hear because they are angry. They feel ignored. They are not buying what the Ministers are selling. For example, the current Minister of Education made a presentation in Parliament entitled, Time for Action (2013). The Minister, in this presentation cited some of the successes of the education system but also highlighted the areas which needed improvement. After hughlighting each weakness in the system, he trumpetted the rallying cry, "Time For Action!"

The teachers with whom I have spoken have listened to the Minister’s call but have not been moved. Some believe that since the education system has produced successes we should focus on these successes and not on the negatives. These teachers believe that in focusing on the negatives we discount the efforts of those who have done well in the system. Other teachers are fixated on the threatened reductions of some of the benefits that they now enjoy. These teachers believe that the Minister needs to do his research. He needs to try to understand the reasons why teachers in the past, were granted the benefits that they now enjoy. Other teachers are at odds with what they term the lack of accuracy of the Minister’s statements as regards issues relating to the leave entitlements, days worked and so on. The bottom line? The Minister is talking nonsense.

Based on these views that teachers have expressed, it is evident that there is no urgency on the part of many of them to take action to change the status quo. Many do not take any responsibility for poor performance even if their principals are willing to do so. Many have little respect for systems of accountability like appraisals that have been introduced into the schools. Many teachers are stressed. But not because of any added effort that they have exerted to achieve transformation in themselves as regards their work ethic. They are not consumed by the job in their desire to achieve improved output. They are in the system to teach. As long as they teach, and they are sure that they do teach, they are doing their jobs.