By Andrew Smith, Staff ReporterEDUCATION MINISTER Maxine Henry-Wilson says that her administration will be marked by the provision of quality education for Jamaica.
Speaking at The Gleaner Editors' Forum held last week, Minister Henry-Wilson described a number of areas which she will be targeting during her administration. Among these are early childhood education and the special needs of inner-city schools.
Regarding early childhood education, the Minister says that "we have a fairly high coverage at the level of early childhood. We have about 1,800 odd early childhood schools that are recognised."
However she acknowledges that there is a variation in the standards of existing early childhood facilities and says that the Ministry is trying to standardise them. She also recognises that many children do not attend any such facility. Therefore, the Minister's focus for the 2003/04 academic year will be the grade 1 inventory of children's learning readiness.
ASSUME
The Minister says, "When children go into grade one, we don't assume that they have learned anything, although they should have." She adds, "We don't expect children to be able to say the alphabet or read or write or anything." The grade 1 inventory incorporates "how they are able to interpret things - in terms of what they see, what they hear, how they hold a pen - the strength of their muscles and so forth."
Once this inventory is done by the schools, "the records (will be) brought to the Ministry, for us to do the assessment, to get back to the schools about where children are not quite ready, and to prepare material for remediation where that is necessary." If corrective actions are necessary, they will be taken, so that "by the end of grade 1 we have children who are all on par."
Minister Henry-Wilson also recognises that inner-city schools need attention and she is currently developing a programme directed towards these institutions. She says that, "there are about 21 inner-city schools that we have selected for special treatment and at the moment what we have done is we are working with principals in doing a development programme so that we can do some interventions."
She adds that due to the location of these schools, "the issues are not only academic, but they are community, they are societal, they are parental , and so the programme has to reflect all of these characteristics."
MAJOR TOOL
Culture has been identified as a major tool of this programme. The Minister says that culture is, "a way of getting certain synergies with the community." She gave the example of Kingston High School, "where everything was about to collapse and then they introduced drumming and all of a sudden the students have perked up and they are not just drumming - they are now interested in other things because you use that as an entry point. And out of that you are also able to address even the question of violence you build some kind of relationship with the community because people come in to hear the drumming and you can talk with them."
