Education Ministry to Engage Multilateral Partners to Develop Building Standards for Schools

The Ministry of Education, Skills, Youth and Information is engaging multilateral partners to craft robust standards that will guide the development of more climate-resilient schools in the country.

Portfolio Minister, Senator Dr. the Hon. Dana Morris Dixon, provided an update during Thursday’s (November 13) press conference at Jamaica House.

More than 600 of the island’s schools were impacted following the passage of Hurricane Melissa.

“Many of our schools that I’ve seen that sustained damage, what made me quite unhappy was the fact that last year after hurricane Beryl some of those very schools were repaired, and one year later, we are back at repairing them. So that raises questions for me about the quality of work that would have been done, and it also raises other questions about standards and the standards of our schools.

“I have asked some of our multilateral partners to work with us to look at the building standards around schools, because it is not acceptable that you have a hurricane one year and then you fix it and then the next year you are back at it again,” she said.

The Minister underscored that building climate-resilient schools is paramount.

“We will be doing that work – we have to build schools that are climate-resilient. There are many schools that have done a tremendous job, they are trying to help themselves and they’ll add a classroom here and they’ll do some work on a new hall.

“In many instances, a lot of that has been destroyed and so as we move forward, we’re going to have to ensure that even where schools are doing their own fundraising and building structures, that they are built within particular standards,” Dr. Morris Dixon said.

Hurricane Melissa, a category-five system, made landfall on October 28. It was the strongest storm to hit the island in recorded history.

The torrential rains, storm surges and catastrophic flooding, left a trail of destruction with 45 confirmed deaths, to date.