WILLEMSTAD - From Friday, teaching staff will finally get what they have been hoping for so long: the extra salary they should have received years ago in connection with scaling up from teacher A to B or B to C. Minister Sithree van Heydoorn has announced that a period with a lot of effort to realize that challenge can finally be closed.
The grading of teachers and their payment has been a subject of discussion since 2000. Recently, the education union 'DOEN' sounded the alarm by scheduling an emergency meeting to emphasize to the minister that a solution had to be found.
That solution is there because the government will start depositing the extra money from tomorrow. “Teaching staff is the key and the foundation of the island,” says Van Heydoorn. Depositing the money will take several weeks because the staff can be divided into different groups. For example, there are several requirements, namely that the teacher has been active in education in Curaçao for at least five years.
Van Heydoorn says that on December 1, 2022, he made statements that there would be improvements in the field of education on three points. Scaling is one of them. The other two points, reducing working hours to 27 teaching hours and vacation days for non-teaching staff, are now receiving attention.
The public can count on more information about this in the coming period, says the minister.