Our Terms & Conditions | Our Privacy Policy
167
An education expert has pressed for a rethink of plans to merge underpopulated primary schools, warning that closures could hamper efforts to support children with special needs and proposing that empty classrooms be transformed into inclusive education hubs.
As the Ministry of Educational Transformation advances plans to amalgamate primary schools in response to a declining population, literacy specialist Shawntelle Morgan has called for a shift in approach.
Morgan, founder of I-Teach Transformative Knowledge Solutions Ltd, urged caution in how the ministry executes its school amalgamation strategy. While acknowledging the demographic realities driving the policy shift, Morgan emphasised that the solution must go beyond simply consolidating schools and should consider how existing educational spaces can be transformed into meaningful support centres for vulnerable learners.
You Might Be Interested In
She told Barbados TODAY: “My concern was, we already have class sizes that are too big to meet the needs of learners, especially during this educational transformation where the ministry is saying we’re going to look wherever possible to have learners of varying abilities within a classroom. If you’re having learners with varying abilities within a classroom, then one, we need teachers to be trained to meet the needs of learners with varying abilities. So from the time we’re looking at merging learners of all abilities in one classroom, the consideration should be, how do we use these spaces that have small numbers to better support spaces that may be oversubscribed.
“If you’re going to say, persons are moving out of the community, are there less children in this area then? How do we still utilise the space in a way that we don’t just close them?”
With more children now being diagnosed along the autism spectrum or facing challenges related to literacy and numeracy, Morgan said there is a growing need for dedicated resources and teacher training to properly integrate these learners into mainstream education – or provide them with specialised environments where necessary.
“We want to have enough spaces for them if they have to go to the special unit depending on where they are on the spectrum, or if they can be merged into the traditional classroom,” she said.
She recounted instances where parents of children with autism are told by teachers that their children do not belong in “traditional” classrooms.
“So then what would happen is they will say to the parent, you know, ‘this child is very disruptive. They’re not keeping quiet, you know, they’re being naughty’ against some similar sentiments and the parent is saying, ‘well, you do know that they’re diagnosed with autism’ and some of the teachers will say, ‘yeah, well, I wasn’t trained for this, or they should be in the special unit. They should not be in the general education classroom’.
“What would happen then is that the child would be in the classroom, but the emphasis would be on keeping them settled. So the instruction is not being given.”
During the sitting of the 11 Plus examination earlier this month, Chief Education Officer Dr Ramona Archer-Bradshaw noted that, due to shrinking rolls at some primary schools, plans for amalgamations and the repurposing of underutilised schools have already been drawn up by ministry officials.
“We’ve completed an analysis of the schools that should be amalgamated. That paper is right now before the minister of education for him to provide the feedback, but we looked at a number of criteria to determine which schools should be considered for repurposing,” Dr Archer-Bradshaw explained.
“The criteria involves school roll. We look to see whether there were emerging housing areas within the school location, [and] we also look to see whether the bus route was one that made sense.
“There are a number of factors that we considered in terms of proposing which schools should be reconsidered for repurposing and refurbishing. I can’t say at this stage [which schools] – I need to get the feedback from the minister and of course, the Cabinet.”
According to Morgan, school amalgamation presents a unique opportunity – one that could allow the ministry to create specialised centres of excellence in underutilised schools.
She stressed that for this transformation to be effective, it must be grounded in comprehensive, nationally available data. Not only statistics, but also lived experiences from students, parents, and teachers.
“We need data on statistics and qualitative data,” Morgan suggested. “Let me also make that clear because you know when they say data, people automatically think numbers, right? We need both quantitative and qualitative data on the number of children who have challenges with reading. I’m not even going to say with dyslexia, because there are many children who may be undiagnosed and they would fall through the cracks.
“We need data on children who may be displaying behavioural challenges. We need data on the households who can seek external support, and persons who generally need financial assistance in getting the interventions for their child. We need data on the knowledge that teachers have and the gaps in this knowledge so that we can formulate the professional development to match the knowledge gaps. We need data on the resources that teachers generally have.”
shamarblunt@barbadostoday.bb
Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.
Aggregated From –
Comments are closed.