MOE conference to discuss poor literacy-test results

Philip Hamilton, Gleaner Writer

Poor Grade Four Literacy Test performances, as well as inadequate programmes for students requiring special intervention, are among several issues up for discussion at the Ministry of Education's Special Education Conference to be held next week in Ocho Rios.

The two-day conference, which will take place January 25-26 at the Jamaica Grande Sunset Resort, is being hosted by the Special Education Project of the ministry's Education System Transformation Programme (ESTP).

It will target special and general educators, school administrators, parents, teacher educators, researchers, as well as non-government agencies, and others with an interest in special education.

Dr Michele Meredith, special-education project coordinator in the Ministry of Education and conference coordinator, said the reasons for targeting so wide an audience arose from educators' suspicions that several students have learning problems which have not been identified or diagnosed.

"We see it in our literacy results, our grade-four results and, in more recent times, the dissonance in why is it we're not seeing higher levels of success, " said Meredith.

Meredith added that educators suspected many children possessed unidentified learning difficulties which required special intervention, despite not being diagnosed as children with special needs.

Required skill sets

She noted that several teachers were increasingly discovering that they lacked the required skill sets to meet the needs of children in the classroom, noting that the problems extended beyond the students' mental ability to process information.

"We have children with emotional behavioural disorders that have not been identified or diagnosed. When those present themselves in the classroom, teachers find the regular school rules will not correct the kind of behaviours they are seeing," said Meredith.

The educator noted that attention will also be given to child mental-health issues and chronic childhood illnesses, as well as creating a system which produces successful reading and mathematics skills across schools.

Several local and overseas presenters are scheduled to take part in workshops and presentations on topics such as autism, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, speech and language, multiple and intellectual disabilities.

Persons from Jamaica, Bermuda, St Kitts, the Turks and Caicos Islands, as well as the Bahamas, have already expressed a strong interest to participate in the conference.