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Now for those of you teachers who are completely caught off guard with this announcement – President of the BNTU Luke Palacio says you shouldn't be because they have repeatedly warned teachers about these regulations. Now he will do all he can for those teachers who couldn't for some reason access training but for those who knew and just refused to get qualified – well, you're on your own.

Luke Palacio - President, BNTU

"We have been keeping our teachers up to date in terms of reminding them at all our meetings that we hold, seminars every occasion we have we said to them remember if you have a provisional license, the rules are clear. The rules are clear that after 5 years you must get the necessary training to upgrade your license from a provisional license to a full license. So they are aware, we ensure that we sit on different committees be it with ministry, be it with management so that we can mitigate to a certain extent what has transpired here. As a matter of fact, in some of the recommendations that have been made, the BNTU is very instrumental in ensuring that all our teachers who would be affected will not be affected negatively in totality because for instance we insisted that person who qualify for service benefit that even if their license would have expired that they will be given their service benefit."

Courtney Weatherburne

"We're talking about those teachers we know this is a reality. Some of these teachers are in the service and simply as just there for the pay check; they are not passionate about teaching. So simply they will say I'm not going to get any training, I'm just here to get a pay check. Are you guys looking into those cases specifically?"

Luke Palacio - President, BNTU

"Our position on that is clear if you did not avail yourself of the opportunity given and you cannot prove that you had done so, except that you decided I will stay here; the best we have done in the teaching profession under the school teachers pension act, if you teach up to 10 years, you're entitled to a gratuity. We are going to ensure, the minister has said so that they will get that benefit. If you would have been teaching for 15 or more years, you're entitled to a gratuity and a pension but you will collect pension when you reach the age 55. There are not being left out in the cold but it was their decision, if it was their decision not to access the opportunities and further their education then there is very little we can do."

Again we stress, those teachers with a full license are safe - it is only those teachers whose have a provisional license that will expire in June 2017 that have to act now.