People want good lives for themselves, but the UK has taken so much from the Caribbean. Better to help the islands thrive
Gus John is an academic and an equality and human rights campaigner
Does it matter if we in England are recruiting teachers so heavily in Jamaica that classrooms there don’t have enough of them? Ask those who run school systems in the Caribbean that desperately need their brightest and best. People will always want to be mobile. The issues are in what numbers, and why and how.
When I became director of education in Hackney in 1989, the first Black person to hold such a post, there was a massive shortage of primary school teachers and secondary maths and science teachers across the country. I recruited 55 teachers in Trinidad to come to work in Hackney; 50 in primary schools and five in secondary schools. They had all been made redundant by their government on the order of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as part of a structural adjustment programme. I insisted on three things. One, that they would come to England as family units unless they were single. Two, that Hackney would be responsible for finding them accommodation and school and college places for their children and would help to find employment for their spouses who were not teachers; and three, that they would all be supported to gain qualified teacher status and graduate and postgraduate qualifications.
Prof Gus John is an academic and an equality and human rights campaigner
