At the 18th Biennial Convention of the Dominica Association of Teachers (DAT) held Wednesday, Ministry of Education Permanent Secretary Robert Guiste announced a historic milestone for the island nation’s education workforce: more than 200 educators have been granted permanent employment contracts over the 2024-2025 academic year.
For decades, Guiste noted, the job security and professional standing of Dominica’s teachers failed to align with the outsized impact of their work to shape the nation’s future. The Ministry of Education has prioritized correcting this imbalance, he said, making deliberate, significant progress to formalize and stabilize educators’ career trajectories across the country.
“We have moved decisively to create permanent appointments for qualified educators across numerous critical roles,” Guiste told convention attendees. “Today, I can confirm that we have secured permanent roles for all deputy and assistant principals, most heads of department, and the majority of senior graduate teachers, senior qualified teachers, graduate teachers, and qualified teachers across the system.”
He emphasized that the 200+ permanent appointments issued in the last academic year represent the largest single batch of permanent hires across Dominica’s entire public service. The ministry is also moving forward with a full reclassification of roles for primary school educators, adding deputy principal positions where needed and updating rankings for graduate and senior qualified teacher posts. Guiste shared that ministry leadership has already held collaborative discussions with the teachers’ union to move this reclassification process forward.
Beyond primary education, the ministry is working to formalize positions in the Early Childhood Development sector, which currently relies entirely on contracted educators. The long-term goal is to integrate early childhood education fully into the mainstream public education system, bringing permanent job security to educators in that critical segment.
Guiste stressed that this push for permanent appointments is far more than a routine administrative adjustment. For educators, permanent status delivers more than steady employment: it unlocks access to full employment benefits, pension-eligible service, and above all, professional dignity. “It means you can plan your future, plan your family’s future and your career without the cloud of uncertainty hanging over you,” he said. The ministry has also addressed the unstable employment status of educators working on temporary program-based contracts, he added.
While welcoming the progress on permanent appointments for public school teachers, newly re-elected DAT President Mervin Alexander drew attention to a lingering equity gap that undermines fairness and unity across the teaching profession: the divide between directly employed government teachers and educators working at government-assisted private institutions.
Alexander questioned why educators and principals at government-assisted private schools earn consistently lower salaries than their counterparts at directly operated public schools, despite carrying identical responsibilities teaching Dominican students and serving the national education mission. “Aren’t we all teaching children of the Commonwealth of Dominica? Aren’t we all serving the same nation? Aren’t we all carrying the same responsibilities? If that is so, why the disparity? Why?” he asked.
Alexander argued that the current pay gap is unfair to educators in assisted institutions. While the government provides some funding support to these schools, he noted, that support has not closed the salary gap, and the DAT remains unsatisfied with the status quo. “Fairness matters, and this is an issue we must confront to unify our profession,” he added.