Minister wants more pay hikes for educators
(CNS): Education Minister Juliana O’Connor-Connolly wants to give another pay raise to all educators, from entry-level staff to school principals, so that no one in education will be making less than $3,500 per month by the start of the 2024 academic year. During her welcome address to education professionals at the start of the new school year, the minister outlined her aim to get senior staff salaries on a par with that of school leaders elsewhere in the world, and said there was room for hope in the coming budget.
Six years ago, O’Connor-Connolly set out her ambition to lift the salaries of all educators. While qualified teachers are now earning at least $5,000 per month, she said that the salary of more senior staff had not been reviewed, but she was hoping that this would be addressed in the coming year.
“It is highly unfair for us to look at the output before we look at the input,” she told education professionals, stressing that she was making another big ask on their behalf given the rising cost of living.
Explaining that, as part of the political arm of government, she cannot dictate pay, she said she had requested a pay hike for the senior staff so that no deputy principal will earn less than $7,400 per month while principals in secondary schools could be earning almost $10,000 per month if Cabinet approves the raises, as O’Connor-Connolly said the senior staff members have been waiting six years for their salary increase.
After years of weak mathematics results in government schools, the minister also announced the arrival of more than a dozen specialist maths teachers for primary schools who are tasked with helping improve those results. “These specialist maths teachers are not going to play musical chairs in the classrooms,” she said. “They are going into the primary classrooms to teach maths… I expect to see the next level of performance.”
There are also 37 new Caymanian teachers who will be working in government schools this year for the first time. The minister said this reflected the success of the investment government has made in the scholarship programme for local students.
See salary scales for education professionals in the UK here.
See the full address on CIGTV below:
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Category: Education, Local News
All civil servants, including teachers recently got a cost of living adjustment. Why should teachers be singled out to get another pay hike? Ridiculous.
fake news
This salary increase was announced about two years ago – why wasn’t it implement then! Now that the Premier is calling for a cut in spending she is screaming for psy raise. These people are all psychotic.
Cayman public primary schools are nothing more then sunday schools.
Keep the kids dumb and uneducated and tell about this god, that you have to fear.
I wish there was freedom FROM religion, but my kids have no choice. And I have to fix the brainwashing when they come home from school.
These fanatic fundamentalist christians are the biggest threat to our children. Leave that garage to the parents and dont make it mandatory for everynody.
Obviously this deluded Minister did not receive the memo from the Premier about cost cutting! How ridiculous can she get and how do the others allow her to get away with it? We have the most beautiful school BUILDINGS; the highest paid teachers, the best fed students (all free meals from Mise en Place) BUT still we have the POOREST RESULTS ever in our history!! Poorest results in the entire Caribbean – yes, even all those that you numb skulls refer to as ‘third world countries’, Whatever makes Cayman a ‘First World’ country and who determined that we are? Was it the Deputy Governor with his fairy tale ‘world-class civil service’? Only God can help this poor, lost country.
Only Zod can save us now
She will get away with it because they need the numbers. She is also the peacemaker between all the factions that is the PACK.
The schools do not have space for our children (you can see this on the Ministry of Education’s website) so I think she has bigger issues to address…
Largely because hundreds of expat children are in government school, for free. Time to face facts. We cannot afford the madness that has taken hold.
By expat…you mean Jamaican…?
No other expat kids are at government schools.
We quarrel that it is the Jamaican teachers that may our education system bad and cause our kids to underperform. However, its the same Jamaican teachers that teach in Jamaica and a large percentage of their population matriculate to higher education i.e post-secondary (academic, vocational, or technical) both within and outside of Jamaica.
So it cannot be just the teachers who are the problem. Fundamentally the problems in the home, the NAU handout mentality and the lack of meritocracy are some of the issues with our public education system, which is why my multi-generational Caymanian as of right children and grandchildren have all gone and are currently going to PRIVATE SCHOOL.
JuJu, always paving the way.
I wonder if exorcists will get a pay rise and maybe additional bonuses too for every soul saved?
Everything that is wrong with the Cayman Islands all rolled into one.
oh great, more expat families with kids who are sure to have more kids while here clogging up roads
Proof positive that Caymanians can’t do the maths involved with making their own country better… This is why we need more foreign teachers!
How exactly are new teachers going to fix the terrible at home life that is largely responsible for the dismal education results?
So their children can attend our government schools for free?
Let me get this right. Teachers struggle to get packs of paper as they’re tightly rationed, but somewhere they found money to buy balloon structures!
I’m not saying that MoE money is best spent on balloons, but the analogy is good. Massive expense that looks impressive for a little while, that then slowly loses its reason for being, before becoming worthless trash. Deep!
Did the last big pay raise the teachers got help the children ?? A big fat no. Money never and will never change one’s work ethics
in the Brac all expats children attend the Government schools Free. And the expats little children are in the Day Care all day for 10 $ a day. imagine 10 $ for a whole day.
The politicians. especially this one, just love spending other people’s money. It’s like Crack cocaine to an addict. She literally can’t help herself.
BTW, the last huge teacher pay raise caused student performance to increase markedly- NOT. Their performance has actually decreased so much so that just 30% of primary school children read, write and do math at a satisfactory level. In other words, 70% of public primary school students are failing in the basic foundation of education. She really should resign or be forced out immediately.
As the Premier orders cost cutting in all ministries
Premier can’t order shit. You really think he in charge?
I fear our education system has become so Jamaican that our Caymanian (Born) kids are now at quite a disadvantage. I am not picking on Jamaicans but since the status grants and the switch to CXC, there has been a proliferation of Jamaican teachers and students in the school system. So much so that when I attended the Prospect Primary school leaving, I was shocked at just how blatant the anti-Caymanian sentiment is at that school. The whole ceremony was hijacked and took 4 hours and most of it was to hand out awards to non-achieving children and the kids of popular Jamaican parents. I kid you not there was an award for the most improved at the middle of the class. There was an award for every single category of student you could think of, then the teachers decided to spend the PTA money on getting themselves awards as well. It was beyond ridiculous. But all of the ridiculousness I would overlook had it not been for the complaints from Caymanian children of being bullied and discriminated against by a particular Jamaican teacher who told the class that, “certian parents are going to see a different side to me today”. We have lost control and the few remaining die hard Caymanians are undermined and backstabbed into submission. Sad Sad Sad… We chose to stay British in 1960, but we have now been conquered in the name of the Pineapple.
The Jamaicanisation of Cayman is fueled by the next Jamaican taught generation.
Added to Jamaicans in politics , Saunders, Seymour Mac and Kenneth , Jamaicans will take over and ruin Cayman like they did their own country.
This has to be stopped by Caymanians who have to be aware of who they employ and who they vote for.
Congratulations!
Private school fees going up again!
I don’t like her politics but she is doing her job as Minister (better than sound bite kenneth and Wayne)! Well done Julie
Is this supposed to be sarcasm? You surely can’t be serious.
Our exam results would strongly suggest not.
I am all for raises for teachers but can we please put this woman out to pasture?
Could not agree more! I wonder what level of mathematics she could achieve? Her contribution to Education over many years has been abysmal. Can she not understand she is the problem? The poor and declining results have occurred on her watch.
It’s all smoke and mirrors with this mob.
They laud this huge recruitment drive, yet the reason for it in the first place is because the system is so bad. Turnover of staff can make or break a school system. These fools throw money at the issue, don’t address the real reasons staff leave in droves, and then people keep leaving. Kids get different teachers all the time with no continuity. Coincidentally, it’s usually the better teachers that end up leaving.
Stop pissing money down the drain with the laptops for all initiative, too.
Where are these teachers coming from..?
Even more pay will mean that even more 3rd world “teachers” will flood Cayman.
You do not make a better teacher out of a poor one just by suddenly paying them more despite their poor performance.
Cayman is a rich country and the government still seem to think that throwing more money at anything and everyone is the way to solve all problems.
It’s not.
Stop recruiting teachers from Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad and other 3rd world countries. They will only instill 3rd world expectations and standards in children who will have to compete with the first world educated, in Cayman’s workplace.
Trinidad? Ha. We’d be so fortunate to have the success that Trindad has enjoyed in regards to education.
Trinidad still has a selective system not a comprehensive system…the brainy ones get selected for good secondary schooling the not brainy ones get tossed aside and we don’t hear about them, just the brainy ones who go to universities.
l really wish l was a genie to make this wish come through. To give you only white first world educators from the great educational systems of the US and Europe (UK) to make the educational system top notch and a leading gem of the Caribbean, yeah the world. As these third world countries, are no longer relevant to educating the now affluent society, that it educated years ago when there was hardly an education system. No these third world countries where your fore fathers had to flock to, guess what you have arrived so who needs their low class educational system anymore. Look at the product samples from those third world countries in the same first world countries who are leading in various sectors, oh how foolish of those first world countries to benefit, but no the great Cayman is above that. Better yet, ask the first world US and UK why they recruit yearly all these third world countries’ teachers, they crazy eh. It’s beyond me how a people can hate those who have contributed so much to their continued success. l wonder how much of this hate is taught to students and how affects their learning. Again l wish l was a genie. But God is merciful to ignorance. Thank you third world teachers for creating first class citizens that hold their own wherever they go.
It was first class before Truman and Roy. Just saying.
True dat 8:17. Then Oswell decided we needed to get rid of all white colonial influences and poured all his vitriol on Cambridge exams and brought in CXC which he then claimed needed West Indian teachers who understood our children ( because we’re all black) unlike the white British ones we had been using before that. At least the British ones spoke proper English grammar.
Pouring more money into teachers is not going to have the outcome you’re looking for. these kids broken homes is the root of all public school problems.
Until this truth is faced, nothing will improve for the children.
I agree with this in principle, because I believe teachers play a vital role in helping to shape and determine our success in life.
However, I am wary of anything that Julianna does. Hope this doesnt come with another 16% pay raise for politicians and Govt scales A to D like the last 16% pay raise the PPM approved in 2021, as everyone else was suffering and coming out of the pandemic and lockdown.
Alden, Roy, Joey, Julianna, Dwayne, Barbara, Chris/David, how does it feel to give yourselves a 16% pay raise in 2021 when the rest of the country was suffering?
Then Alden gets a knighthood??!!
Should have been a Good Night hood.
Handout capital of the world.
Handout to all the imported children brought in from elsewhere for freeness Why bring them here or have them if they can’t afford to feed them.
Who bringing them in bobo?
Civil servants.
Unhinged comment of the day!
you can pay them whatever but make it performance related.
Finally, something sensible from this person lol