Let State, teachers dialogue to end the national strike

Few things demonstrate the dysfunction in this country’s education system as well as the troubled relationship between the two teachers’ unions and the Government. The adversarial nature of interactions between the unions and the State -- through their employer, the Teachers Service Commission, the Treasury, the Education Ministry or the Labour Ministry -- has long been a barrier to the improvement of education in the country.

Efforts to ensure there is a balance between quality and workload have been frustrated; attempts to tie pay to performance have been thwarted; plans to redeploy staff to where they are needed bear no fruit; and solutions that fix teacher-ratio problems without committing the State to costly recurrent spending have been fought. Indeed, the power of the unions as a single-agenda organisation has proved partly counterproductive even as it appears to achieve something with its constant battles over salaries and allowances.