New Schools to Focus on Teaching Children How to Function in Fourth Industrial Revolution – PM

Prime Minister, the Most Hon. Andrew Holness, says the new schools the Government intends to construct will focus on teaching children how to function well in the fourth industrial revolution with technology and collaborative learning.

“Most of our schools, they are not built and designed for the kind of teaching and learning that is required to ensure that our population can function well and navigate in the fourth industrial revolution,” the Prime Minister said, at the official groundbreaking ceremony for a new performing arts centre at his alma-mater, St. Catherine High School, on Friday (June 18).

“They are not built for collaborative learning. They are not built to take into consideration lighting, air-flow and heat. The aesthetics are such that they present a very hard and harsh environment which reflects on how we behave, and they are not always built with ensuring that there is enough green space and playing space for our children,” he added.

The Prime Minister also noted that schools have not been built with the necessary labs and technology integrated into them.

“So, we are still very much reliant on the chalkboard. Most societies that are integrating technology, they have electronic boards in their classrooms. They integrate internet and WiFi in their classrooms. They have purpose built labs for chemistry, physics, biology and computers,” Mr. Holness pointed out.

“We need to modernise our schools and we need to stop building schools that are just four walls of concrete,” he added.

The Prime Minister said the Government has a plan to build six new schools in Jamaica, as “we haven’t built a new school going almost a decade now.”

“We have expanded schools and have put in new classrooms, but we haven’t really built a brand new school,” Mr. Holness noted.

The Prime Minister informed that the last school was built in Cedar Grove, St. Catherine.

“I started that school as Minister of Education and it was completed somewhere about 2013… So, it is almost a decade since we have actually built a new school.”

“The school population in Jamaica has not really grown significantly.  It has been fairly stable…so it is not that we don’t have school places for the kids coming into the various grades, the challenge is, we don’t have schools that are purpose-built for the times in which we live,” Mr. Holness said.