Infant Schools to Merge

Minister of Education, Rev. the Hon. Ronald Thwaites, says that several infant schools will be merged this year to create 145 new institutions.

The move is part of efforts to improve quality at the early childhood level. The Minister said many of the new schools will result from the amalgamation of three or four smaller institutions, some of which have already been identified, and they will be centred around space in primary schools.

“We have over 250 primary schools with enough space to accommodate an infant school,” the Education Minister said on Thursday, May 9, as he addressed an early childhood symposium at the Medallion Hall Hotel in Kingston.

He pointed out that while there are considerations of geography and convenience, the move will allow Government to assign qualified early childhood teachers to those institutions. This, he said, will be complemented by training and retraining to progressively raise the calibre of teaching.

He reiterated that less than 30 per cent of teachers in early childhood institutions have any formal training.

Rev. Thwaites pointed out that while access to early childhood education in Jamaica is good, the assessment tests done before the children enter grade one show that only 50 per cent of them can be adjudged ready.

He informed that of the approximately 3,000 early childhood institutions across the island “we have about 1,500 of the early childhood institutions that are doing very well. They can stand on their own and they are engaging their students in ways that lifts up play, lifts up order, lifts up a readiness to learn and those are very good.”

“But there are approximately 1,500 others that frankly, are ‘keep and care’ operations,” he said. “We have to uplift those because the standard of education there is not where it needs to be,” Mr. Thwaites said.

The symposium, which was staged under the theme: ‘Equipped For Service, Empowered For Action,’ saw participation from several early childhood teachers from Jamaica, Canada and United States.

Guest speaker was Canadian High Commissioner to Jamaica, His Excellency, Robert Ready, who highlighted the close relationship between the two countries over many years.

He noted that there are close to 350,000 Jamaicans living in Canada and over 450,000 Canadians that visit Jamaica every year. Out of this interaction, there are many organizations and businesses that work for the benefit of both sides.

He applauded the partnership between Jamaican and Canadian educators, who have been working together to make a contribution to education.

Contact: Andrea Braham