Against the background of increasing Government revenue, we suggest the Ministry of Education consider the following desiderata to buttress the education landscape:· Creation of student personnel departments, to include counsellors, social workers and school psychologists available to students, teachers, parents, administrators and the community.
· Full-time reading and writing specialists in every school, who can operate both as push-in (during reading instructional times) and pull-out (with the requisite space and resources) teachers.
· Broadband, smart boards and other audio-visual resources in every classroom and each student should have computer access.
· Teachers’ aides to help with classroom management, students’ instructional understanding and engagement.
· Self-contained special ed-classes with schools becoming wheelchair accessible.
· Comprehensive, ongoing data collection on schools, to be aware of real-time developments, ensure ongoing evaluation, continually strengthening areas of weaknesses, and distributing best practices across the education landscape. Migrate to electronic data collection, including a portal for students’ evaluation that can be accessed by parents and guardians.
· Ongoing training of all teachers to ensure readiness for new challenges. Selective, piecemeal training leaves huge gaps and adds to the existing inequity, while placing some teachers and schools at a disadvantage. Further, teacher training should transcend administrations. For example, under the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance for Change (APNU/AFC) Government, the ProFuturo Programme in appropriation of technology with pedagogical uses, leadership and educational innovation was launched to help close the digital gap and ensure digital education nationwide. It appears to have been shelved.
· Reduction of class sizes. Researchers generally agree that a class size of no larger than 18 students is required to produce the desired benefit, especially individualisation and personalisation of instruction.
· Establishment of a school safety unit within the Police Force. To facilitate quick response, large schools should be equipped with intercoms.
· Incorporation of anti-violence and related issues such as self-esteem and self-confidence; anti-bullying and cyber bullying; saying no to drugs and alcohol; dealing with violent and/or toxic home environments; teenage pregnancy and sexual abuse into the Health and Family Life Education programme, where this is not yet in place.
· Setting up school leadership teams (SLTs) comprising parents and community members along with administration rep/s, selected teachers including the union rep, one or two student reps, perhaps from the Students’ Council and a Ministry of Education rep such as the education officer. SLTs develop educational policies for their schools and make sure there are resources to support those policies.
Also school administrations should be empowered to:
· Harness students’ creativity: poetry slam club with students’ performances recorded and shared; art club enabling students to create murals on school walls and within school communities; drama clubs, music clubs, dance clubs with talent tapped to enable fundraisers and participation in contests and online high school newspaper clubs. To facilitate all of this, schools should be allowed to use one afternoon session weekly for club activities. Implement a creative arts programme to supplement the clubs with subjects such as fashion design and cooking, enabling students to leave high school with portfolios and a body of work that they can use to seek further training and career possibilities.
· Set up work study and internship programmes. That only a few schools have such programmes is vastly unfair to other students and fosters the existing inequity.
· Establish mentoring and remedial programmes in high schools to close the gaps among students.
· Build an inclusive sports programme that encompasses a minimum set of sports for all schools and include PE as part of the curricula for all schools. In this respect, schools can build relationships with sports clubs and associations whereby they can access training for their various teams and with alumni, local and overseas, for resource support.
· Add a vocational programme to the curricula, along with STEM and a technical programme, where these do not yet exist, so that needs of all types of learners can be fulfilled and all students provided with career pathways.
