We're tackling those deficiencies in education

THE EDITOR, Sir:

Your editorial yesterday (June 10), 'Call in the receivers, Mr Thwaites', is correct in highlighting deficiencies in the educational system, but wrong in suggesting a "seeming absence of a robust initiative for confronting the issue".

We, therefore, use this opportunity to update your readers on the measures the Ministry of Education has put in place to improve educational outcomes, particularly in underperforming schools and across the education sector, in general.

Operation turnaround

The ministry is developing a special-measures policy, similar to the Ofsted system in England, that will enable education officials to prevent underperforming schools from reaching the point of no return.

If, at the end of a three-year period of special intervention, schools do not respond positively, the ministry will terminate the services of the school board, management and teaching staff, under established rules for the public service.

New management and teaching staff will be employed on a performance-based contract to operate the school.

While this policy is being finalised, the ministry continues to implement measures to lift underperforming schools. Last October we launched a national school-improvement intervention, dubbed Operation Turnaround, targeting 129 schools - 61 at the primary level and 68 at secondary - with the aim of turning around their educational outcomes.

Among the schools targeted are those identified as underperforming schools by the National Education Inspectorate (NEI), and require immediate support.

Under Operation Turnaround, underperforming schools receive support in the areas of mathematics and numeracy; English language and literacy; behaviour modification and social development; and other subject areas.

The ministry's regional offices support school principals in developing action plans to address performance issues specific to their context.

The regional offices receive technical support from the Core Curriculum Unit, as well as the numeracy and literacy teams, which deliver workshops at three levels - nationally, regionally and in specific schools.

The ultimate measure of the success of Operation Turnaround will be incremental student performance in the Grade Four Numeracy and Literacy Test, the Grade Six Achievement Test as well as Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations administered during the academic year and beyond.

Literacy and Numeracy Drive

In addition to Operation Turnaround, the Ministry of Education has embarked on a drive to improve the teaching and learning of literacy and numeracy skills.

Through its National Comprehensive Literacy Programme, the ministry provides support to classroom teachers, at both the primary and secondary levels of the education system. One hundred and two literacy specialists are assigned to 500 schools across the island. The country is on track to meet the target of 85 per cent mastery of literacy by 2015. The results of the Grade Four Literacy test, administered islandwide, last week, will indicate which schools are in need of further special intervention.

The ministry is now far advanced in the implementation of the National Comprehensive Numeracy Programme, being rolled out in all primary schools and selected secondary schools across the island. We are on track to deploy 140 mathematics coaches this September, to provide on-the-ground support for teachers in approximately 250 underperforming primary and secondary schools, in the first year of a four-year programme.

The success of the mathematics programme will be assessed by our achievement of the new targets - 85 per cent proficiency in numeracy at grade four by 2018, and 85 per cent of grade-11 age cohort to sit CSEC Mathematics by 2017. Additional targets include 100 per cent of grade-11 age cohort sitting CSEC examinations in math and English by 2016; and 54 per cent of students sitting CSEC attaining five subjects by 2016.

Byron Buckley

Director Corporate

Communication

Ministry of Education