Minister Responds To Infrastructure Concerns
The Minister of Education Wayne Scott today issued a letter to “primary school parents, teachers and principals to underscore the Ministry’s commitment to address infrastructure problems in public school buildings.”
In his letter Minister Scott stated, “When I released the SCORE Report in February 2016, I made a commitment to everyone involved in the public education system that the Government would find resources to address the serious infrastructure problems facing our schools.
“Immediate steps were taken to address these issues. I was able to visit every primary school, along with our Principals, Facilities Manager, and others to see first-hand the problems raised in the SCORE Report and by others.
Slideshow of teachers demonstrating over school conditions earlier this week
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“Following consultation with school principals, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Public Works have developed a maintenance works schedule to address the most urgent concerns.
:Areas concerning safety and health have been identified as a first priority. Some work has already begun and more will continue during the summer break.
“In order for parents and staff to be provided more information on our improvement efforts, the Acting Commissioner of Education has requested that all principals share with their PTAs, Parent Councils and staff all of the problem areas identified within schools and the schedule for repair and maintenance.
“I again wish to again thank all students, parents, PTAs, parent councils, primary school alumni, Department and school staff, retired educators, unions, community organisations and other interested community members who participated in the school reorganisation consultation. Your contributions are valued and are an important part of this process.
“I have received over 60 formal written submissions, in addition to the numerous verbal and written submissions obtained at each of the public consultation meetings.
“At this time each submission is being carefully reviewed and considered. This phase of the process is expected to be completed in the upcoming weeks.”
….make it sooner than later….children’s health and safety depends on your swift response.AMERICA CUP CAN SURE WAIT.
You didn’t care about the kids when you took them out of school to go spend schooldays up on the hill.
We’ll actually , sometimes teachers must make sacrifices to ensure a better future for the students . Up on the hill was a special one . Their paychecks will reflect the sacrifice . But Zevon you needn’t worry , no one will ask you for a friggin dime !
Adults and paychecks is one thing. But kids were taken taken out of school to go join the mob on the hill. Education didn’t then, did it.
Education didn’t matter then, did it.
There is a holy trinity in any project management principle; time, quality and cost. In order to achieve quality, you need to face that your costs will be higher and the time will must likely be longer. If you want quality in less time then you need to pay more. If you want it done fast then you need to accept a lower quality (and an increase risk to safety) or higher cost, if you need to keep costs down then you need to face longer time and or lower quality. The remedials required for the schools are further complicated by the fact that there is a limit to what can be done while school is in (especially if you are concerned with the safety of our children) and that there are just too many facilities than we can actually support at this time.
The point is, you can try for it all, but you have to pay for it all, and even if we didn’t have the AC, we still couldn’t get it all. In fact, given that our economy would be worse than it is now with AC, we would have even less to work with, as you would have to be willingly blind and deaf to not notice just what the AC has already done to help our economic situation… and for that matter, what it has done to help diversify the education options to our children.
Thanks for your true concerns…There is no doubt there’s much work needing to be done but the general public must first acknowledge,”Rome wasn’t built in a single day”. Therefore Minister Wayne Scott stand firm these are problems you’ve inherited, they go back decades…Yes, during the former Governments (P.L.P) period with them ignoring the problems and now wanting to blame the O.B.A for their short comings
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Raymond Ray, how long can you continue to blame the PLP for the present administration’s shortcomings? Five years, ten?
Time for the OBA to get their act together.
They are getting their act together, it just that people don’t like the options that are left to them. Declining school enrolment, ever aging infrastructure, more infrastructure than is required or than can be maintained with the dwindling resources that the OBA has inherited. If it wasn’t for the economic stimulus of the AC, you can be assured that government would have even less now to be tackling this issue… and these issues didn’t just appear, the may be some new problems, but the majority of them have been known of and building for over a decade, and would have been far cheaper and easier to have dealt with back then than now.
The Minister of Education Wayne Scott today issued a letter to primary school parents, teachers and principals to “underscore the Ministry’s commitment to address infrastructure problems in public school buildings.”
I don’t think the infrastructure problems exist only in the primary schools!!!
How about underscoring the teaching problems? I’m not saying that we should ignore the maintenance issues, but all of this is really smoke screen for a culture of underachievement and poor classroom management skills. I have no problem with homework for my P2 child, but none of it, not one shred of it, exercises any creativity. All just boring worksheets and endless lists of spelling words. No Flat Stanley, no special projects, no art ever comes home, no homework returned. No indication of how he’s doing unless we ask. And this is in one of the ‘better’ schools. Just deplorable. So honestly- I could send my kid to school if it wasn’t in good shape if the quality of education was actually decent, but it isn’t. So, thanks, teachers. What are you going to do to enhance the experience of our children? Oh- that’s right, you can’t because the bathroom’s a mess…thank God we try to do things with him at home, because he sure isn’t getting it there. Schools should be safe- I agree. But let’s not confuse physical conditions with quality of education. Oh- and remember when every classroom in every school simply ‘had’ to have a smart board, because that was the only effective modern way to teach? Most of them don’t work now. And that’s not why Johnny can’t read. When will we learn????