THE EDITOR, Sir:
IF WE expect good results from our primary schools then we need primary schools that are 'fully-loaded'.
Why are nurses absent from primary schools? Why are classes in many of our primary schools left improperly attended because teachers are forced to sometimes spend several hours on a public hospital bench?
Classes in primary schools are sometimes interrupted and children lose valuable contact teaching time when teachers are forced to leave a class to dress cuts or to administer to some other health problem of students.
Primary school teachers have been playing multi-faceted roles for decades, but it is time for us to modernise our primary schools and as far as possible, leave teachers to do the job that they are really trained for and employed to do teach.
For too long, we have been seeking optimum results from our primary schools yet we place minimum input into those
institutions.
We had to wait decades to get remedial specialists in the primary school. We had to wait decades to get guidance counsellors in those institutions. Will we have to wait several decades to get nurses into the primary schools? For all the stressed-out primary school teachers who have been called upon to play the role of nurse, others who are constantly called away from their classes and the children who are continually robbed of contact teaching time, I hope not.
I am, etc.,
HUGH ANDERSON BLAIR
Kingston 3
