Education Ministry launches remedial initiative

This after diagnostic testing found specific skill gaps among the students in Mathematics and English Language Arts including Creative Writing. The statement said the testing found there were 2,478 students with deficits in English Language; 2,619 with shortcomings in Mathematics and 1,794 with deficits in both English Language and Mathematics.

Minister of Education, Anthony Garcia, said the Form One Initiative was conceived in response to data from the 2016 Secondary Entrance Assessment Examination (SEA) which identified several students who were about to enter the secondary school system but had numeracy and literacy deficits.

He said these students were found in 56 secondary schools in the country’s seven education districts.

The Ministry of Education said it had conducted teacher training to equip the teachers with skills and strategies to help students fill the knowledge gap and had also provided training workshops with principals, teachers, school supervisors and district teams aimed at sensitising them to the various needs of the students as well as their role in re-tooling the students.

Garcia said, “We are in the business of education and it is our mandate to ensure that every child in this country, who is of school age, has an opportunity to access quality education. If we are to ensure that our children benefit from the quality education that we are supposed to give to our students, there must be certain things in place.”