Malcolm Gorrill
Northern News Services

Inuvik (Jan 25/02) - The Beaufort Delta Education Council has approved a proposal to attempt to hire up to 15 or so teachers for the coming school year during an early recruitment drive.

Teams will be able to conduct interviews and make tentative job offers, pending successful reference and criminal record checks.

These offers will take place before the education council will know how many openings it will have this September.

During BDEC's regular council meeting last weekend, director James Anderson said the idea is to hire up to 25 per cent of the anticipated need, based on last year, when BDEC hired around 60 teachers.

The early hirings were first proposed at the council's regular meeting in October.

Last year BDEC took part in a recruitment drive, but was not able to make any offers until March 15, the deadline for teachers within the region to forward transfer and promotion requests.

Last year teacher hirings took place well into the summer, and one reason for this drive is to try to have most of the teachers hired earlier this year.

"It gives us access to the cream of the crop, or at least who we consider to be the cream of the crop," Anderson said.

"If we're not able to make job offers when we go on recruitment, there's not really much sense in going."

Those teachers offered jobs will be guaranteed a position somewhere within the BDEC region, though it will still be up to individual district education authorities to hire from among this pool of early recruits.

It was decided at the BDEC meeting that a DEA representative should be included in each recruitment team.

The recruitment drive is already under way. A team was to go to the University of Alberta's job fair, which began this past Tuesday.

Other campuses to be visited soon include the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Prince Edward Island.