Dionne Rose, Staff ReporterLOCAL EDUCATORS say the intervention strategy recommended by the Education Task Force to address illiteracy in Jamaican schools will have their support.
The task force, in a report presented to Prime Minister P.J. Patterson and made public last week, concluded that the educational system had failed to properly
equip students with the required skills to take them through the various stages of schooling.
The 14-member body
recommended that a two-fold solution that includes a literacy remediation (learning to read) and a grade level remediation (reading to learn) becomes available in schools islandwide.
HIGH SCHOOLS SUPPORTS
Alphansus Davis, president of the Association of Principals and Vice Principals of upgraded high schools supports the move. "Anything that is going to improve the performance of students will get our blessing," he said.
He noted that assessing students to determine the need for remediation was a "welcome move and it is something that we have been recommending for some time now."
Lauriston Lindsay, principal of Happy Grove High School in Portland, also welcomes the initiative. Schools in that parish are reportedly filled with students whose reading is sub-standard.
RADICAL INTERVENTION
"That sounds great in theory. It is in sync with what is happening at Happy Grove High School. There must be some radical intervention and I hope that we will see immediate action," he said.
Faced with a situation where scores of grade seven students were barely able to read, teachers at Happy Grove were forced to institute a number of remedial classes to address the problem. The situation was so bad that out of a population of more than 200 grade seven students, only 10 were reading at the required level.
Another recommendation is for 5,000 teachers' aides to be trained through the National Youth Service (NYS), key clubs or 4-H clubs to support primary school teachers in remediation programmes.
Gladstone Thompson, principal of Edith Dalton Comprehensive High School in Kingston, says that the training of remediation specialist teachers is essential to tackling the problem.
