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Both the union's President and the DPM stressed that today's conversation was just a preliminary meeting to set up a timeline, and to chart a way forward to resolving any lingering differences between them:

Hon. Elena Smith, President - BNTU
"We met with the officials from the ministry, then our core executive members from the BNTU. The meeting today was to chart a way forward in terms of the issues that we raised with the ministry and so the meeting for us to do just that, to determine how we are going to proceed with looking at those issues we had: proposal 22, hardship and all of those areas."

Reporter
"Are you able to share any details as to how those talks went?"

Hon. Elena Smith, President - BNTU
"We have agreed that we are going to be setting other meetings so that we could address each of them individually and come to agreement on them. We are hopeful and at the same time we are expecting that results will be favorable."

Reporter
"How long before there is any feedback regarding what you presented to the ministry officials?"

Hon. Elena Smith, President - BNTU
"We start meetings next week. So we are hoping that within a few weeks or so we would be able to conclude those matters."

Reporter
"So this is just an initial sit-down?"

Hon. Elena Smith, President - BNTU
"Correct. Just a meeting to chart the way forward, in terms of how we are going to address the issues."

Hon. Patrick Faber, Minister of Education
"The meeting today is was just to decide on how we would move forward. So we have not gotten into the details just yet. We have agreed that we will have a meeting with the BNTU to discuss the categorization activity for hardship allowances and we will also be discussing the issues that are outstanding for proposal 22, which was never really an issue. The 2 issues that are outstanding as you may know are the issue having to do with the proprietorship of 4 community schools whether they want to remain as community schools or whether they want to come under the government's ownership. So we discussed a way forward. We form a little committee to deal with that issue and then the other issues is having to do with the 30% coming from denominational and community schools as well, that are not forthcoming for some of the past employees who are relying on their benefits of pension and gratuity. So in effect what has happened from a very long time ago is that we agreed that we will support the teachers in the quest to try to get those managements to pay their commitment which is their agreement. We will give the union and the teachers support in doing that."

"That was always what is was. I think there is some misunderstanding in terms of when I said it is not a live issues, is because we had already agree to these issues and so we just confirm that that is the position today and then on the matter of commuting allowances, well we discussed those and where it is that the teachers had in some kind of application and it could be proven whether it in some cases it did not reach the ministry. It probably got to the managements and the managements did not submit those that we have agree to honor those. So again, we had a very cordial meeting. We were able to address all of these issues. In fact I believe that it was always that we could sit-down and discussed these issues. I think where we went wrong was that and I'll blame the media here - you come and ask sometimes, you say that this one says that and that one says that. It stirs up the mud and really we are not at a position where we can't agree to sit-down at the table and talk."

We'll keep following to see how this path to resolution plays out.