Education Transformation Has Not Ended – Holness

Minister of Education, Andrew Holness, says the Education Transformation Programme has not ended, but is being absorbed into the mainstream operations of the Ministry.
“There is no plan at the present time to close transformation so the reports that I have seen in the media, which state categorically that transformation will be closed in March next year, are patently false,” Mr. Holness said at a press conference held at the Ministry’s head office in Kingston yesterday (Dec. 18), to clarify the issue.
“The decision to close transformation rests with the Government and I have not informed the Government of any such decision,” he stated further, while informing that the project, as constituted, was intended to be a short-term undertaking.
“It was intended to be a nursery where new projects could be launched, tested, operated upon on a short-term basis, to get the optimum mix of resources, ideas and policies and then to take them out of the transformation nursery and place them in the general Ministry of Education to operate on a wide scale, and to mainstream them,” Minister Holness stated.
He said that the Ministry is now at the phase where some of the seedling projects can be taken over, including the National Literacy Project, which falls under the Curriculum Work Stream.
“I rate that programme [National Literacy Project] as a successful programme and that is one of the successes that transformation delivered. The Ministry must now step up to the plate and take over the literacy programme and mainstream it. What you will be seeing in years to come is an expanded and deepened programme with more literacy specialists and more support for schools, so in that sense, the Ministry is not doing anything new,” he emphasised.
Mr. Holness indicated that from as early as June, when he made his Sectoral presentation, he had outlined the policy direction of the transformation programme.
“In June of last year, I made an extensive presentation in Parliament outlining clearly the direction of transformation so there is no secret,” he stated, while expressing disappointment with recent media reports that the programme will be done away with.