Government, from as early as next year, will start implementing new policies to enhance the education sector, says Minister for Education Hon. Dr Mahendra Reddy.
He made the comments while opening the 2014 National Education Conference in Lautoka this morning.
Dr Reddy said the new policies are aimed at reforming the education sector with an overall goal of entrepreneurship education is to give students the attitudes, knowledge and skills to act in an entrepreneurial way.
“We in the Ministry wish to address this by a number of strategies which will culminate in the full work of an Education Commission next year,” Dr Reddy said.
One of the key changes will see a new administrative officer based at each school paid by the ministry, whose only job would be to take on all the administrative work/data entry that was previously undertaken by teachers.
The teachers will pass all their data entry to this admin officer.
“We will reduce teacher administrative load by a minimum of 60 per cent so that we return the teachers to undertake their core responsibility in teaching and learning. We term this initiative as ‘re-claiming our teachers” and all bus fare voucher, FEMIS data entry excreta will be done by this admin officer and not by the teachers.”
Dr Reddy said Government will also re-look at the position description of Principals and Head Teachers so that they ensure teachers spend the maximum time in teaching and learning and also attend to disciplinary matters without having to send our divisional officers as police officers.
“We will ask that all syllabus be completed by term two so that term three is spent on structured revision work and remedial classes for students. Weekly reports will be collected from schools on the remedial work and student evaluation of teachers will be undertaken facilitated by Principals and Head Teachers.
“Other key changes will include swift changes across the board in terms of early childhood programmes, and teachers would be trained to maximize the imparting of knowledge more in the classrooms,” Dr Reddy added.