Strategies make up for Lost Time

With stage one of the exercise to resume classes for all children attending government schools completed on Monday (29 November), the Ministry of Education is now focusing on strategies to make up for lost curricular time.

Come January, Permanent Secretary Joy Basdeo explained, schools will start earlier to provide a longer school day, and the school year will also be extended. The school calendar has also been revised to create more curriculum time. For example, teacher in-service days and some term breaks have been removed; the annual National Children’s Festival has been cancelled, and national tests will be replaced by in-house testing and key stage standardized tests.

“The good news”, Mrs Basdeo stated, “is that this arrangement will mean that most of our primary school students will only get 3-4 teaching days less than they would normally. So that at the end of the 2004/5 school year, primary students will have attended close to 186 of the normal 190 teaching days.”

At the other end of spectrum for government schools, the examination (Year 12) and Year 11 students are also well accommodated, Mrs. Basdeo said.

The ministry’s main challenge remains Year 10 at John Gray and George Hicks students, Mrs. Basdeo said, adding that the ministry’s recovery team is working with the George Hicks staff to provide an enrichment programme for their students. (See separate story on arrangements for George Hicks and John Gray students.)

“If we can achieve our goal of providing a range of activities to complement, supplement and extend, as necessary, the curriculum to be provided at George Hicks under the new shift system, we will go a long way to making up for some of the learning time that these students will have lost.”

To ensure that these challenges are overcome, Mrs. Basdeo stated that between now and December, schools, with the assistance of the ministry recovery team, will be working to review the curriculum in the core subjects, to revise learning goals and to develop strategies for making up lost curriculum time.

“We are asking teachers to prune the curriculum to identify core learning objectives and ways to maximize the learning time available. It is also possible that the catch-up process may have to be spread over more than just one year. Thus primary school teachers will work in key stage groups and the Year 10 teachers will work with their peers from George Hicks,” Mrs. Basdeo said.