Education Minister encourages parents to invest in children’s education

Sep 23, 2014 News

“Buy one beer less…put $700 less credit in your phone,” said Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand, as she appealed to parents to help in the process of getting their children literate.

Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand

Minister Manickchand said, “Any investment in your child is a worthy investment,” as she addressed a gathering at the St Agnes Primary School recently.
But according to her there are instances where some parents complain about lending their support to improving their children’s level of literacy. “I have heard teachers asking parents to, over the August holiday, go to a particular store and buy a big workbook for their nursery children for $700 and it would give you a lot of additional work… parents can complain about that but I say don’t,” asserted the Minister.
She said that while such a book may not be required it would in fact; supplement what is done in the schools. “Right now we are comfortable with saying to you that as far as we have been told by the schools, across the country, every primary school pupil has Mathematics, English, Social Studies and Science books individually for them to go home with. And every class has the required number of class sets of other books that they would need,” said the Education Minister.
“Every single child in our primary schools should have these books in their book bags,” insisted the Education Minister.
She expressed her desire to hear from parents themselves whether their children are in possession of the necessary books. “We are hoping that the media can help us spread that message so we can hear from parents…(even if they say) ‘we don’t know what you are talking about; that my child (is) in this school (but) doesn’t have (this or that) book’. We can deal with that.”
The Minister said that over the past few years the Ministry has procured specifically with a view to ensuring that every child, from Grade One through Six, at the primary level will have the relevant textbooks.
“It would be interesting for me to find out if there is any child without those books, from which schools, and why that is so and let’s deal with it…That is something we never had before (and) that is something we can celebrate.”
“It didn’t happen by magic, it didn’t happen accidentally. We sat down around the table and took a decision. Sometimes we fail ourselves by not publicising these things enough but this is what we are going to do for every primary school pupil,” the Education Minister stressed.
And since the current focus of the Ministry is to ensure that its children are literate by Grade Four, Minister Manickchand pointed out that keen attention is being paid to primary education. She added, “We believe that if our children are literate by Grade Four we will be taking care of more than half of the problems we face in the secondary schools and so there will be a huge drive to make sure our children are literate by Grade Four.”
Currently the education sector’s ongoing celebration of Education Month is being done under the theme “Literate by Grade Four through consistent home, school and community involvement” to emphasise the need for collaboration to produce literate children.