New Education Act needed

TSC Chairman Dr Fazal Ali yesterday told a Joint Select Committee at the Office of the Parliament that the current Act “does not even cover early childhood education” and has many gaps.

While putting together regulations governing the functions of the TSC and the Service Commissions along with the Ministry of Public Administration, Ali said, they found themselves trying to bring regulations based on a 1966 Education Act.

“The regulations must work with the act. If we put in place the regulations based on the current act, it would be “backward”. We want to create regulations for 2017 and for the future,” he said.

“We have decided that we want to ask the Prime Minister and his Cabinet to look at a new Education Act and for the regulations to be developed in parallel with the new act to allow for greater efficiency and management of the education system,” he said.

A new law, she said should allow for a new method of recruitment that will enable the education districts including the one Tobago to manage their education system with the commission having a monitoring role. The current model of recruitment in the public service, he said, is still based on late 1950s and early1960 models.

He said, the problem is generally compounded after general election with the creation of new ministries, like the current “mega” Ministry of Education which is “overseeing everything from ECCE to PhD.” The TSC, he said, can propose a new framework with which the Chief Parliamentary Counsel could work with to create a new law or amend the existing one to deal with the current and future state of education.