Schools Must Implement Improvement Plans – Education Minister

Minister of Education Hon. Rev Ronald Thwaites says school boards and principals are responsible for the successful implementation of improvement plans.

The Minister was speaking at a post-Sectoral press briefing held at the Office of the Prime Minister on Thursday, May 8.

He was speaking in relation to the development of school improvements plans for schools, based on data from the National Education Inspectorate.

“We cannot have engaged in such an expensive and valuable exercise and then simply have it dissipated by being largely ignored. We all must be responsible for adding value,” Rev. Thwaites said.

The National Education Inspectorate has completed 129 inspections over the year. This baseline work has so far covered over 800 schools.

Meanwhile, Chief Education Officer in the Ministry, Dr. Grace Mc Lean said that the observations and recommendations from the Inspectorate’s report for each school are usually put into an action plan, which informs the school improvement plan. This is then monitored by education officers.

“We are seeing increasing success over the years. We do not wait until after the inspection report is published before the actual intervention begins. The education officer works closely with the officers from the Inspectorate and so once the report is presented to the school, the education officer has a copy,” Dr. Mclean said.

She explained that the school improvement plan includes a school self evaluation plan, which will determine what the schools’ area of focus for a particular year.

“We try as best as possible to ensure that these plans also inform the budget for the following year,” she said.

Dr. McLean said the Ministry is in the process of developing a school improvement policy, which will ensure that there is a standardized approach used across the educational regions.

“So that …once there is an intervention to be done we can refer to this and we can also customize to suit the specific need of the school,” she explained.