Decision to Extend School Term to be Made This Week

Chief Education Officer in the Ministry of Education (MOE), Grace McLean said today (October 4), that a decision will be made during the course of this week whether or not to extend the school term, as a result of school closures last week caused by heavy rains from Tropical Storm Nicole.
“Whenever we have situations of this nature, then the Executive Management team of the Ministry meets and we make a decision based on the assessment of the whole situation. The school year is pretty young, which means that a little time is on our side,” Mrs. McLean told JIS News in an interview.
“We have all the various holidays that are coming up as well, so we will be reviewing that within the course of the week and we will make an announcement as soon as that has been finalised regarding the extension of the school term or the school year,” she added.
In the meantime, the Chief Education Officer explained that the preliminary assessment of the damage from Tropical Storm Nicole has commenced.
“We are now putting that together, but we seem to have significant damage in Clarendon, St. Catherine, Hanover, Westmoreland and St. James,” she noted, pointing out that schools continue to carry out cleaning up activities.
“With the passage of Tropical Storm Nicole, we are happy to say that at least for today, schools have started off normally. However, there has been and continue to be quite a bit of cleaning up that some schools will have to do during the course of today as well as tomorrow,” Mrs. McLean informed.