PM: ‘Education apartheid’ must end

By Sheria Brathwaite

Promising more staff and funding for the Ministry of Education, Prime Minister Mia Mottley on Monday vowed that her administration will end the “educational apartheid” system to make the education transformation process as seamless as possible.

Acknowledging that the current system only benefits a few, she said the time had come to part ways with the framework that has been in place for more than 70 years.

“The important thing is that we understand that this nation cannot continue writing off so many of our children each and every year. And if it’s the last thing I do, whether in or out of public life, it is going to continue on this fight because this defines the Barbados of the present and the Barbados of the future. It has to be done because the country needs it,” the prime minister said on Monday. “Because for more than 70 years, we have been practising a form of educational apartheid. We take the best few and we make the best of them and then we leave the rest, who’s the majority, outside [and] that can’t work.”

Mottley was speaking after a screening of the film First Class – a 90-minute film that follows the founding class of one of America’s high schools – at the Olympus Theatres in Sheraton Mall.

She said that the education transformation process being undertaken will be supported by her government providing the needed resources.

“Today I am creating additional posts for the ministry and I’m creating sufficient posts to be able to deal with all its facts that it has to deal with – from dealing with the realities within schools right back through to the transformation and innovation that is necessary to carry us over the next few years to help make this real,” she assured.

“As minister of finance, I have made a commitment with Minister [in the Ministry of Finance Ryan] Straughn to be able to put the funds in place not just this year or next year, but for us to be able to have a sustainable source of funding because this will be the most consequential project in terms of getting it right.”

Mottley also pledged to meet with the Democratic Labour Party about the reform process, as well as teachers.

Left to right: Executive Director of Crosstown High School Chris Terill, Chief Executive Officer of XQ Institute Russlynn Ali and Prime Minister Mia Mottley in discussion after the film, ‘First Class’ was aired.

She also called for national support for the education reform process.

“I am here today to give you the pledge that as prime minister and minister of finance, this is not a Ministry of Education project, this is not a whole of government project, this is a whole nation project. If we’re going to see crime go down in this country, if we’re going to see poverty go down in this country, if we’re going to see youngsters have opportunities in this country to be whatever you want and to be able to go wherever you want on this earth and still give back to your country, then we need a whole of country, a whole of nation approach . . . . It is only when the whole community comes together as one that we’re going to be able to move it forward,” she said.

Though saying that the new structure of Barbados’ education system would be revealed after the entire consultation process, the prime minister indicated that Barbados will be adopting multiple new approaches and school heads would determine which approach best suited their particular learning environment.

“Some may go the traditional ways; some may use [the] Montessori [method]; some may use the Waldorf method; some may use project-based learning like we just saw here; some may use the Dalton School method which pushes on kids the responsibility of learning. So there are multiple ways and it’s up to the principal working with the ministry to determine which one suits you, which one embraces the ethos of that school and that community,” she explained.

“But what we can’t do is do one or two of them and believe that that is change; transformation comes only with scale. The exact design of what we do will come after the consultative process finishes. Everything that we have set out to do may not be the exact framework that we end up with. What matters is that we carry the majority of the people of the country with us because if we’re not carrying the majority with us, then there’s not enough people to lift the weight.”

During her remarks, Mottley disclosed that she met last Friday with local architects to plan for the improvement of school infrastructure.

She said the aim is to have them work with the government “in a consortium to be able to see not only how we can change but when we can change, because we can’t only rely on Christmas, summer and Easter for doing the changes to the physical environment that are necessary”.

Russlynn Ali, Chief Executive Officer of XQ Institute, the Oakland, California-based non-profit organisation that Barbados is partnering with to introduce education reform, said she was impressed by the initial meetings she had with Prime Minister Mottley and education officials. 

She said her organisation was approached by more than 40 countries and Barbados was one of the states that felt “right” to work with. 

“Your prime minister really was the impetus for us coming here,” she told the audience while answering a question posed by Chief Education Officer Dr Ramona Archer-Bradshaw. “Her team, Minister [Kay] McConney, you [Archer-Bradshaw] . . . the commitment of your educators, the tenacity of your people – we didn’t second guess it [when you approached us] . . . . You showed us that it is possible that a country can transform so much quicker than ours [America].”

Chris Terill, the executive director of Crosstown High School, a learning institution that XQ assisted with education reform, said the new system worked because of the relationship that was forged among the school community.

“[Once there are] caring and trusting relationships between students and teachers, and students and administration and teachers, and then with the greater community and parents, everything else will come together with time,” Terill said.

sheriabrathwaite@barbadostoday.bb