With the closedown of three secondary schools in the south (Newton College and Presidency College of Rivière-des-Anguilles and Rose-Belle High School), the staff of these colleges have been given jobs in other educational institutions. For the non-teaching staff, things have been quite satisfactory; but the teaching staff seem to be facing real problems. They have been posted in other educational institutions but the new jobs offered are not necessarily teaching jobs: many have been given administrative jobs such as clerks, supportive clerks, librarians and ushers in other private colleges, in state secondary schools and even in primary schools.

If they have been forced to be satisfied that at least they have got a job, the fact that they are mostly under-employed is a bit like a ?nightmare?. After years of service in teaching, years of relationships built with their schools, their class and their students, today they find themselves behind a table in a small office, doing paper work. This under-employment has not only hurt their self-esteem but some have been facing humiliations and have not been accepted so easily in their new institutions. Yet, for the time being, they have no other option than to bear it for the sake of earning their daily bread. Here are a few testimonies:

?This is not a shop! It?s an institution. Here we employ qualified people only!? These are the words used to humiliate a lady teacher with more than 30 years? experience and who has been posted in a state secondary school as an usher. The lady tells her story with lots of sorrow in her voice as well as a justified anger. ?It?s against my heart that I went to my new job. I don?t know anything about clerical work. I have been a teacher for years and years. We don?t have any status any more. It?s a real suffering through which we?re going through. No one is caring about our situation. We are still in uncertainty. We are not the right person in the right place today. I would agree to be transferred in a new institution as a teacher, even if the institution is far. I want to be the master of my class and not sitting behind a table and doing paper work!?

?I don?t have a proper place and any proper job. I?m just sitting in an office in a primary school!? This is the story of another teacher with long experience. He has been transferred as an assistant clerk in a primary school. Today, he is just sitting in the office of a primary school. ?Other people with qualifications and with less experience have got better jobs as teachers. I?m really frustrated. I?m even getting family problems because of this.?

These are only two cases but many other teachers are in the same situation. However, some have been luckier. They have got a posting as teacher in other schools. But even there, they are not fully satisfied as there have been changes in the subjects they used to teach. ?For 15 years, I have been teaching accounts but now I have to teach ?physical education? in a private school. I was lucky to get a job as a teacher though but it was not easy for me, to announce the bad news to other friends who were not about to be employed as teaching staff?, says a teacher.

The staff of the three private schools that were closed down have to go to their new jobs because they have to earn a living. But all those years spent in their schools, all those relationships created over years with students, colleagues and even the surroundings, the pride to teach and make so many students succeed in life; all those memories are really hurting them. ?We were like a family in the south. The school was like our home and the students were like our children?? These are the common words used by most of these teachers to express their anguish.