Teaching Service Commission poised to accelerate promotions, strengthen education system
The recently appointed Teaching Service Commission (TSC) is set to drive a new wave of promotions and professional advancement across Guyana’s education sector, enabling hundreds of senior teachers to move into leadership roles for the first time in years.
President Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali underscored this renewed mandate on Wednesday as seven individuals took the oath of office to serve on the Commission at his office on Shiv Chanderpaul Drive in Georgetown.
The members, Doodmattie Singh, Shafiran Bhajan, Lancelot Baptiste, Joan Davis-Monkhouse, Satti Jaisierisingh, Mayda Persaud, and Saddam Hussain will serve for three years, effective December 31, 2025.
The TSC is an independent constitutional body responsible for teacher appointments, promotions and disciplinary oversight established under the Teaching Service Commission Act of 1975.
Its reconstitution, the President noted, will restore efficiency to the promotion process and align with broader government reforms aimed at modernising education, expanding digital learning, and improving teacher welfare.
Acting under Article 207 of the Constitution, the President stated that the Commission now has a critical role in ensuring that long-overdue promotions are advanced fairly and efficiently, helping to fill the roughly 2,700 senior positions recently created across the school system.
“As you know, teachers in a traditional sense had to wait all their life, close to retirement, to become a head teacher sometimes,” President Ali said, explaining that the new vacancies, including some 823 newly introduced senior roles, were deliberately structured to foster upward mobility and strengthen educational delivery nationwide.
He emphasised that the Commission’s work builds confidence among teachers and ensures they are treated justly, creating a professional environment where performance and merit are rewarded.
“These positions did not exist previously,” the president pointed out. “This means more teachers will be promoted, and more teachers will be given the opportunity to be promoted. Promotion means a higher salary and additional benefits. And of course, retiring at a higher level of pension.”
President Ali described the TSC as an essential instrument of fairness, professionalism, and trust.
“The future of Guyana’s education system does not begin in a classroom alone. It begins with trust in the institutions that govern those who teach,” he said.
Urging the newly sworn-in members to exercise integrity, natural justice, and impartiality, President Ali reminded them that their decisions will shape the calibre of the nation’s teaching workforce.
“Your decisions will help shape a teaching workforce that is capable, motivated, disciplined, committed and confident, ensuring that the modernisation of education in Guyana is matched by a corresponding growth in professionalism and dedication among those entrusted to implement it,” he stated.
The ceremony was attended by the Minister of Education, Sonia Parag; Minister of Public Service, Government Efficiency and Implementation, Zulfikar Ally, other senior officials, family members and education administrators.