When will things in the Ministry of Education iron out? In 2022 and 2023, it appeared to be issue after issue plaguing the sector. Now with just a few weeks into 2024, here we are again.
We are well aware that after the Ministry of Health, it is the one ministry that touches thousands of lives: students, teachers, ancillary staff, parents and guardians.
We are well aware that the undertaking is huge. However, we are forced to join many Barbadians in asking: When will things in the Ministry of Education settle down? When can we expect some level of normalcy so that policymakers and educators can get down to the task of educating the nation’s children?
The first teaching day of this, the Hilary term, started Tuesday. Students of Princess Margaret Secondary are not back in the classroom as yet, instead taking online classes while repairs are done to a damaged staircase.
On Tuesday, Minister of Education Kay McConney told the media the delay was to ensure no one got hurt.
She said: “That was done to ensure that safety came first, because once we discovered there was a concern, we brought in an engineer right away and he said there would have to be some remedial work done. It was better to deal with the matter right now, rather than wait for it to be something where somebody gets hurt.”
Ironically, the next day a janitor from St John’s Primary School fell through the floor of a prefab timber classroom at Mount Tabor Primary.
The female worker was rushed to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for treatment but the Ministry of Education said the employee did not receive any major injuries. The building was newly built to house some of the 89 students of St John’s Primary, who along with janitorial staff and some teachers, were moved to Mount Tabor after the Glebe Land school was indefinitely closed on December 13.
The Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) raised questions about the ministry’s quality control inspection process.
Vice-President Julian Pierre, who also chairs the union’s health and safety committee, said: “I would have reported yesterday that there were issues regarding water coming through the windows because the areas of the windows at the top, at the bottom and the sides where the windows fit into the building itself were not sealed. So, who is the person, which department, which company gives the final inspection to say the work is done, work is completed [or] work is of the highest standard for persons to occupy a space?”
In a statement issued on Thursday, the ministry reported the official finding of Gregory Hazzard of Mahy Ridley Hazzard Engineers Ltd., upon inspection of the immediate works carried out on the pre-fabricated building.
The statement read, in part: “This classroom block is safe to be immediately occupied, and no further action is required.”
Hopefully, there are lessons to be learnt from this going forward.
But as has been the case in recent times, education seems fraught with endless issues and controversies.
Tuesday night, by the end of the first Barbados Secondary School Entrance Exam (BSSEE) town hall meeting at The Lester Vaughan School, another contentious issue was brewing.
The ministry announced Tuesday, May 7 as the date for this year’s exam. However, the BUT’s president Rudy Lovell expressed concern about the date.
“The [BUT] is of the opinion that an early June date would be more adequate for those persons who are sitting the Barbados Secondary School Entrance Examination. . . . We also want to state, too, that over the past two or three years, [there had been] some form of consultation with teachers and the union with regards to the Common Entrance date . . . and we are a bit taken aback that that wasn’t the case this year,” he said.
“The ideal situation is consultation at every stage. You want us to be partners, yes, but you should not have a partner that you are not speaking to on critical issues.”
Why was BUT not consulted on the exam date this year?
All of this transpired during just the first few days of the beginning of the new term. There has been saga after saga and issue after issue in the education sector. But, when will it end?
On Saturday, Prime Minister Mia Mottley announced that Sandra Husbands, who was Minister of State in Foreign Trade and Business Development, will move to the Ministry of Education.
While we remain hopeful that this additional assistance will redound to the benefit of the education sector, the reality is that all the issues stated above affect primary and secondary levels of education. As stated by the PM, the new minister has “responsibility for higher education and technical vocational training”. Therefore, her presence may not automatically mean better for the issues that plague our primary and secondary schools.
This begs the question: Is the added resource, in the form of another minister, enough to finally sort out the myriad issues in our education sector?
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