Hinkson backs special needs school reopening, urges more disability support

Chairman of the Advisory Committee for Improving the Lives of People with Disabilities, Edmund Hinkson has thrown his support behind the reopening of a specialist secondary school whilst urging broader accommodation for students with disabilities across the education system.

Edmund Hinkson, MP for St James North, welcomed the announcement by Minister of Education Kay McConney that Alma Parris Memorial Secondary School would reopen next January, calling it “a positive step” in addressing the growing demand for specialised learning institutions.

Speaking on the sidelines of a ceremony at St Alban’s Primary School, where members of the Barbados Childhood Obesity Prevention Coalition and the Muslim community donated a water fountain, Hinkson emphasised that “every child has value”.

“Some persons feel that children with disabilities should be accommodated as far as possible into mainstream schools. That is certainly possible where let’s say a child has a visual impairment, but [there is] nothing at all wrong with their mental capacity,” he said.

“The other theory is that mainstream schools can’t accommodate every child with a disability, especially those with intellectual disabilities and that children under those conditions have to go to a school separate and distinct from them, with teachers who are trained in educating such children. There is a need for all types, and Alma Parris serves that purpose,” he added.

The school, which was closed in 2017 by the then Democratic Labour Party administration amid public criticism, was originally established for students who performed poorly in the Common Entrance Examination.

Hinkson, a long-time disability advocate, stressed the pressing need to provide appropriate educational access for special needs pupils leaving primary school. 

“Those who get five per cent in the Common Entrance Exam can be accommodated and can still be placed in an environment where the best of their talents can come out. Even though they don’t have academic ability, they can still be good carpenters, they can still be better plumbers than I am,” he said. 

(SB)