Govt to launch parenting classes

Minister of Training and Tertiary Education Sandra Husbands says the government will be starting parenting education classes across the country, to support parents’ involvement in their children’s education and stronger collaboration between home and school.

In addition, vocational training will begin at the primary level to help develop various skillsets among young children.

Speaking at the graduation ceremony for the West Terrace Primary School Class of 2025, at the Western Light Church of the Nazarene in Oxnards, St James, Husbands said that too often parents are out of the loop when it comes to the rapidly changing education environment in which their children function—a situation that has to change.

“It is our responsibility as a society to ensure that we empower our parents with the skills, the knowledge, the help, the support that you will require in order to nurture these young ones. This is why our government is going to be launching parenting education across the country,” she said.

According to Husbands, the programme—piloted by the Ministry of People Empowerment with support from her ministry—aims to prepare parents to better understand the unique needs and behaviours of children, who are now growing up in a far different environment from the one in which they themselves were raised.

“Our children are not like us,” she said. “They’ve had a different set of experiences, they’ve been exposed to different stimuli, they live in a different world and because of that they do not think or move or act in the way that we did. One of the things that we must let go of is the notion that they must. What we need to do is to understand that which they face in the environment and what is the very best abilities, behaviours and responses that they will need [in order] to cope with a world that is different from ours.”

She urged parents to embrace open communication and develop positive relationships with their children’s teachers, noting that only through strong partnerships between home and school could children be adequately supported.

“We must be open to understanding, to learning, to talking, to engaging, and this is why I want to urge parents this morning: one of your responsibilities is to help build close relationships with your teachers.

“Together you’re responsible for our children and you can only do it well if you talk, if you share, if you explore together the best ways to address the issues that your children may be facing. There has to be a partnership between the school and parents if we’re going to succeed in giving our children the very best experience,” Husbands insisted.

She also encouraged parents to become actively involved in their school communities by joining Parent-Teacher Associations and attending meetings regularly.

“This is important not just for their sake, this is important not just for our sakes and our pride as parents or our pride in a school; it is important because Barbados has 269 000 people…we cannot afford for one child not to make it in life,” the minister said.

Husbands acknowledged the country’s past failures in education, particularly the tendency to undervalue students who did not excel academically under the colonial system.

She added, “What we have grown to understand is that people have multiple intelligences that stretch across a broad range of behaviours, and that each person can actually be developed to use their particular intelligence and find that pathway to their career that is going to allow them to be the best that they can be and to earn well.”

Husbands revealed that in response to this, the Ministry of Education is introducing technical and vocational training at the primary level, along with personal development plans for each student to help teachers track and guide their growth more effectively.

The personal development plan, she said, “allows the teacher to know exactly how to grow each child”. 

“These are the things that are being taught at Erdiston that will empower our teachers and so you can look forward to a far more exciting life in school,” Minister Husbands said. (SB)