Govt to revisit intake at schools

Come next school year, the intake at a number of primary and secondary schools could be drastically smaller, revealed Minister of Education Santia Bradshaw.

The rationale is to correct overloads at some schools which are placing unreasonable strain on the resources of those institutions.

The Education Minister explained that too many schools rolls are well over 600 students- an amount which most institutions are not equipped to accommodate.

“We are in a situation now where environmental issues and closures at some schools have been putting pressure on other institutions and the school rolls have increased,” disclosed Bradshaw in an interview.

“We have some school rolls where there are over 600 and a large percentage are within the 500 to 600 percent category and we have some with decreasing numbers. So what we have been looking at for the upcoming summer programme is a situation where we assess the schools that may have lesser capacity and see whether they can be some renovations that can be done to those institutions to ease the pressure off of the ones that are 500 and over, because I think only if we are able to even out some of the numbers in the institutions, we can take some of the pressure off the educators as well,” she explained while speaking with reporters on Sunday.

The Education Minister was responding to a suggestion raised by Principal of the Frederick Smith Secondary School Major Michael Boyce, who called for a smaller intake at the Trents, St James institution next school year.

This was to facilitate a period of healing and rehabilitation following a deadly stabbing at the school last November and to provide more individualised attention to the needs of students.

“I couldn’t agree more with the suggestion that we need to revisit the intake of schools, not just secondary schools, but I think also primary schools,” Bradshaw responded.

“Because it’s not easy to having to deal, either at the level of leadership or at the level of the teachers, with those numbers of students in one institution. It puts a lot of pressure on the system. It also puts a lot of pressure on the infrastructure of the school and you will find that the same schools continue to recur in terms of the problems whether environmental or in terms of renovations of the school plant as a consequence of the number of persons who are using the facility,” she said.

kareemsmith@barbadostoday.bb