Beginning this September, college students in Jamaica will now not be routinely promoted to the subsequent grade degree no matter their educational efficiency — a significant shift geared toward tackling long-standing points in literacy and numeracy.
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The announcement got here from Dr. Adrian Stokes, Chairman of the Schooling Transformation Oversight Committee (ETOC), throughout a press convention at Jamaica Home on Wednesday.
“College students who usually are not on the requisite degree can be positioned on a pathway that permits them to remediate the training challenges they’re experiencing. Particular person studying plans can be developed for these college students to make sure correct focusing on of studying challenges,” Dr. Stokes defined.
He famous that the blanket promotion of unprepared college students had created main challenges at the highschool degree, the place some first-formers are anticipated to deal with as many as 10 topics with out foundational abilities.
“These college students, a few of them are positioned in what is named the pathway three by the Ministry. They require targeted consideration to right elementary points with literacy and numeracy,” he stated.
To ease the strain and sharpen the main focus, Dr. Stokes stated these college students will now be required to take solely six topics of their first yr of highschool.
“These college students can be taken by way of a extra focused programme to make sure they’re higher outfitted to pursue a profitable secondary college life. It’s a vital improvement,” he added.
Minister of Schooling, Abilities, Youth and Data, Senator Dr. the Hon. Dana Morris Dixon, stated the variety of topics college students pursue will improve over time based mostly on their educational progress.
“They may, over time, as we take care of the literacy and numeracy issues, be uncovered to all the stunning topics which might be there,” Dr. Morris Dixon stated.
