Petrina Francis, Education Reporter
AFTER GIVING 38 years of dedicated service to the Ministry of Education, Youth and Culture, Margaret Bowie, former permanent secretary, demitted office last Friday.
Mrs. Bowie has served in several divisions at the ministry and was permanent secretary for over ten years.
"There is a time for everything, and it is time for me to move on. I love this place dearly (but) ...in the transformation in education, I think it is wonderful that you would have new leadership and new outlook, new guidance", Mrs. Bowie told The Gleaner last Friday.
She continued: "And I say to everybody, embrace the change and move on."
She recounted that she became permanent secretary when the Reform of Secondary Education (ROSE) programme was introduced. While she found the development of a new curriculum exciting, Mrs. Bowie said it was a challenge to find trained personnel to carry out the job.
LIMITED RESOURCES
She said the ministry's staff should be congratulated on what they have accomplished, given the limited resources.
The former permanent secretary listed several milestones she achieved at the ministry:
The awarding of scholarships on time.
Ensuring that teachers were paid on time.
Responding to questions about the current state of the education system, Mrs. Bowie said, "I don't think that anybody is totally satisfied with the education system as it is. But I would like to place on record that maybe it's the ministry's own fault that quite a bit of what we do is not well known."
She said that the concern about the quality of education and performance level of students is a justified one. "It (the state of the system) is something that we have been aware of and are tackling within the resources available.
"I particularly welcome the focus on education at this time. I sincerely hope that we will be able to bring about the changes that are required," added Mrs. Bowie.
What is next for Mrs. Bowie? "A break, a period of relaxation. A period of enjoying my own cooking. A period of restoring my garden and looking forward to reading fiction," she disclosed.
