Opposition Senator Ashworth Azille has delivered a pointed rebuke of Education Minister Daryll Matthew's public praise for teachers who spend their own money on classroom supplies, arguing that the minister's expression of gratitude is not a tribute at all but a confession of the Ministry of Education's own failure.
"Commending teachers for subsidising the work of the Ministry of Education is actually an admission that the Ministry of Education continues to fail in its mandate to create that sort of environment where teachers can perform at an optimal level with the tools that are required," the senator declared.
Senator Azille, a former president of the Antigua and Barbuda Union of Teachers (A&BUT) who now sits in the Upper House for the United Progressive Party, was responding to remarks Minister Matthew made at the Ministry of Education's annual Thanksgiving Service, where the minister praised educators who dig into their own pockets to keep their classrooms functioning.
"We give God thanks for our teachers who arrive early, they leave late, they buy supplies from their own pockets," Minister Matthew told the gathering, adding that teachers "see the potential in a child long before that child even sees it in themselves."
For Senator Azille, however, the tribute rang hollow and was an acknowledgement of sacrifice unaccompanied by any plan to end it.
An Acknowledgement Without Commitment
Senator Azille was careful to note that he did not fault the minister for recognising the problem. He faulted the minister for only stopping there.
"I know the Minister of Education's recent acknowledgement that teachers across our nation continue to dip their hands in their own pockets to buy classroom supplies was an important acknowledgement to make, and on the surface, it would seem that it was sufficient," he said. "But I would have thought that having made that acknowledgement, the Minister of Education would have given some firm commitment to educators across this nation that this reality will no longer be theirs going forward."
Instead, the senator argued, the minister's words simply confirmed how little has changed for the people standing in front of the nation's classrooms.
"What you're telling us is that in 2026, teachers are still being asked to pay out of pocket for basic things such as markers, paper, printing, learning materials, basic tools. Items that may sometimes run out when they're provided by the Board of Education, or in some instances they're not provided at all," Senator Azille said. "And this really points to a system that has been underfunded."
The analysis is a striking inversion of the minister's framing. Where Minister Matthew presented teachers' out-of-pocket spending as evidence of their devotion — a cause for thanksgiving — Senator Azille recast the same fact as evidence of institutional neglect: a state system quietly balanced on the private generosity of its lowest-paid professionals.
The Missing Money: Classroom Grant and Direct Subventions
At the heart of Senator Azille's critique is what he says the minister left out of his remarks entirely, the concrete funding mechanisms that would make teachers' personal spending unnecessary.
"What was also missing from the minister's remarks is what matters most, in my view," he said. "There was no mention of the long-promised classroom grant, which would give every teacher a dependable allocation for classroom needs. There was also no commitment of a direct subvention to schools."
The second proposal, channelling money directly to schools rather than routing every need through the ministry, is one the senator says he has championed since his years in the teachers' union.
"This is something that we have been advocating for, for a very long time," Senator Azille said. "While the government is responsible for paying salaries and wages and so forth, I believe that schools require some direct subvention, which would allow principals to fund basic programmes, replenish supplies, and respond to real needs in the school context without resorting to begging for resources from all and sundry."
The image of principals "begging for resources from all and sundry" is a pointed one in a country where school fundraisers, barbecues and private appeals to businesses have long filled the gaps in public education budgets, and it shifts the debate from gratitude for individual sacrifice to the structural question of who is supposed to be paying for public education in the first place.
'Monies They have Already Earned' — The Arrears Question
Senator Azille also seized on the government's unresolved debt to educators — the retroactive payments that hundreds of teachers, including some who have since left the profession, are still waiting to receive.
"There was also no firm assurance that the administration will finally honour its promise to settle all outstanding retroactive payments owed to both active and retired educators," he said. "It is mind-boggling to think, and I think disrespectful as well, that retirees who've given decades of service should have to wait on monies that they have already earned. This has been a long-running issue, and this continues to be an issue which affects the morale of teachers."
The senator's concerns are backed by the union he once led. As previously reported by the Antigua Observer, Casroy Charles, the current president of the A&BUT, recently stated in response to the Director of Education's World Teachers' Day address that more than 300 teachers are still awaiting the final tranche of retroactive payments tied to a nine percent salary increase — money that was due in April — while four teachers promoted in 2023 have yet to receive the back pay attached to those promotions, despite the ministry acknowledging the error.
President Casroy Charles struck a tone remarkably similar to Senator Azille's when he dismissed the Director of Education's World Teachers' Day pledges on fair pay as "just talk," telling Observer Media that "the ministry has failed to act on those words." President Charles also revealed that negotiations on the 2025–2026 collective bargaining agreement have not begun, even though the union's proposal has sat with the government for over a year.
That the opposition senator and the sitting union president — speaking independently in the same week — delivering the same indictment underscores how far goodwill between educators and the ministry has eroded, even as officials publicly celebrate the profession.
'Children cannot Concentrate in Sweltering Rooms'
Beyond supplies and salaries, Senator Azille turned to the physical conditions in which teaching and learning take place and to another promise he says the government made for the cameras and then quietly abandoned.
"While our teachers are greeted with platitudes, I think we continue to ignore the fact that our teachers and students have endured extreme and uncomfortable temperatures, while the promise to install cooling units in all schools remains unfulfilled," he said.
"Children cannot concentrate in sweltering rooms, teachers cannot deliver their very best in such conditions, and yet they continue to show up every day. And these are the things that continue to go unsaid, because at one point they made for very good sound bites, but now they remain unfulfilled."
The senator's charge lands on well-documented ground. It has been more than two years since the government announced, at a July 2024 post-Cabinet briefing, that air-conditioning units would be installed in government schools — a rollout Chief of Staff Lionel Hurst said would proceed methodically because many older school buildings, designed to rely on sea breezes, would require retrofitting. Yet, just this week, the A&BUT told the Antigua Observer that classroom heat remains punishing and that the ministry's stopgap measures fall far short.
"Yes, occasionally they might install one or two fans. However, we know that is insufficient," A&BUT President Casroy Charles said, describing teaching in the current heat as a "herculean task" and lamenting that an adequate response from the ministry now appears to be a "lost cause."
Gratitude is NOT a Policy
Senator Azille closed his critique by spelling out the standard against which he says the minister's remarks should be measured — not warmth, but commitment.
"These are the sort of commitments I expected to hear from the Minister of Education, not a simple acknowledgement of the fact that teachers continue to make this tremendous personal sacrifice and the system is not responding appropriately," he said.
"These are the sort of firm commitments that we would prefer to hear coming from the Minister of Education, in light of the expression of gratitude that he wanted to share to our teachers."
At the thanksgiving service, Minister Matthew had cast education as a shared national undertaking, declaring that "the ministry cannot do this alone. Schools cannot do this alone. Families cannot do this alone." Senator Azille's rejoinder, in effect, is that the ministry has not been doing it alone for years. Teachers have been doing it for the ministry, marker by marker, out of their own pay packets.
Coming in the same week as World Teachers' Day — and amid the A&BUT's own public frustration over arrears, stalled negotiations and sweltering classrooms — the senator's intervention transforms what the government intended as a feel-good tribute into a ledger of unmet obligations: a classroom grant never delivered, subventions never committed, arrears never settled, and cooling units never installed.
Until those boxes are ticked, Senator Azille's message suggests, every tribute to the selflessness of teachers will double as a reminder of why that selflessness is still required.
