Dear Editor,
On one of the television news items of Tuesday March 30 we heard the Minister of Education say to the media that he has not received any reports from schools indicating that the children are not prepared and ready for the Grade 6 examinations.
Is it usual for the Minister to receive reports from schools about inadequate preparation? What does his statement mean in the light of the studies which show that the reading skills in Primary schools are woefully below the levels they need to be? Is this adequate preparation?
Some time ago the Minister said that the ministry was contemplating reducing the subject areas at Primary level to focus on literacy and numeracy. How much longer before we see some action on this?
It might be instructive to the public if the media focused on the thousands of children who are failed by the education system in addition to celebrating the exceptional passes.
And on the question of what are called social problems, many years ago the ministry started to pilot the Health and Family Life Education programme. How many more years before this is on the curriculum in all schools.
The last reported education discussion was about violence in the schools and student/teacher violence. The thrust of the conversation appeared to be ‘what should we do about these bad children?’ Has the ministry done anything about monitoring and correcting the inhumane and destructive behaviour of some teachers towards students?
Where is the schools inspectorate to monitor the functioning of schools and the performance of teachers? Where is the system which will ensure that teachers teach children and not subjects? What are the remedies available to students and parents when children are treated unjustly? Where are the rewards for teachers who do what they are supposed to do and treat children as they should be treated?
Many parents are afraid to raise issues of unfair behaviour at PTA meetings because of the fear of further victimization of their children.
How does the ministry propose to deal with this? The PTAs cannot function except persons meeting together can be frank on all issues.
The education system is failing our children and while from time to time the Minister makes statements which imply that he recognizes this failure, his refusal to call it what it is means that the attempted solutions are (like) band aids on fatal injuries.
Yours faithfully,
Joycelyn Bacchus
Halima Khan
Joy Marcus
For Red Thread
