Education Ministry to review years spent in primary schools

Jul 14, 2008 News

With the aim of promoting literacy and numeracy at all levels, the Ministry of Education has announced that it will be reviewing the amount of years students spend in primary schools.
This, according to the minister within that ministry, Dr. Desrey Fox, will be given serious scrutiny, as the current six years spent in primary schools do not seem sufficient for some students.
According to Minister Fox, over recent years, and even after the introduction of the National Grade Six Assessment, it was found that many students were not prepared for entering secondary schools. Dr. Fox pointed out that this is the opinion of several teachers with whom consultations were held. This was also the observation made recently by a visiting educationist. As such, teachers called on the ministry for a review of the system.
“Following consultations, many teachers made the recommendation for the ministry to review the six years spent in primary schools, because, at the end, many of these children are not ready and are not prepared for the secondary curriculum,” Dr. Fox pointed out. She added that, after a careful review, it would be decided whether primary school students will be given another year of school life.
The minister further noted that this ‘lack of readiness’ also contributes to students repeating classes after entering secondary schools.
“When some of these students enter secondary schools, they cannot cope with the curriculum and, as a result, they keep repeating one class over and over; but we can not allow these students to fall by the wayside,” Minister Fox said.
In the meantime, one plan that has already been devised to deal with the situation is a remedial class for students who have already completed the National Grade Six Assessment examination.

According to Minister Fox, over the next six weeks, students who have completed the exams in Region Four will be catered for at summer programmes.

Dr. Fox said the summer programmes will be dealing specifically with preparing the students for secondary school life. Additionally, at the summer programme, teachers who were a part of the literacy and numeracy training programme, which was facilitated by the ministry, will be offering their services.
However, the date for the commencement of the summer programmes has not yet been decided on. As such, the minister is advising parents to keep reading the newspapers and looking at the television for the announcement of the date.