100 Basic Schools to Participate in New Early Childhood Curriculum

Approximately 100 of the island’s 2,025 Basic schools will be used in a pilot project to introduce a new national Early Childhood Institutions Curriculum, to be established within the next year.
Simultaneously, 12 model Basic schools will be built within the same period, and used to emphasize layout and techniques to be adopted in the Early Childhood institutions across the island.
The introduction of the new curriculum will call for a deeper involvement of parents for its successful implementation, while within the model schools emphasis will be on environmental and social interaction.
Minister of Education, Youth and Culture, Maxine Henry-Wilson, made this announcement while giving the main address at the official opening of the St. Leonard’s Basic School, in eastern Westmoreland on Wednesday, December 1.
“We hear a lot about conflict, our children from the early childhood years must learn how to live together, so that they can resolve conflict in a peaceful way. And this is what at the early childhood level we are teaching them values, and the values include how they relate to each other within the classroom and when they play,” she said.
She said that at the model basic school persons would see how the furniture, indoor and outdoor play equipment and physical plant of such an institution should look. In addition the new basic schools curriculum will involve playing and learning, she said.
“It’s adapting, it’s developing and stimulating for the children. We would also like to see the parents being a part of that stimulation because you are the first teachers of your children,” she said, adding, “we want therefore as a part of the new curriculum to involve the parents in the development of the early childhood process, so that you can be an honourable first teacher for your children”.
The Education Minister invited the administrators at the St. Leonard’s Basic School to apply to be a part of that pioneering process for the introduction of the new Early Childhood institutions curriculum.