The first education forum for this year was an opportunity for various stakeholders in the sector to provide constructive suggestions to improve service delivery for our future leaders of the country.
Ministry of Education permanent secretary, Dr Brij Lal said the forum was an advisory body that provided views for an improved and strengthened education operation system.
Dr Lal said there were 41 initiatives implemented by the ministry last year, which would be fine tuned to make it more relevant to stakeholders.
“The Food Voucher program has been dropped because there has been no funding from Social Welfare Department. Similarly, our boat and engine supply has been stopped due to zero budget,” Dr Lal told stakeholders.
He said the tropical cyclone rehabilitation work was almost complete.
“Tropical Cyclone Evan caused extensive damage in the Western Division, especially from Sabeto to Ba, part of the Northern Division and a few schools here in the Central Division,” Dr Lal said.
“I had said in the media that all schools should start on time and all schools did start on time.
“We are thankful to all agencies that came in, worked hard and made things possible where they were able to put back the classrooms, put temporary shelters and tents to enable classes start on time.”
Dr Lal said there were some schools still undergoing repairs, which should be completed in the next two weeks.
He reiterated to the forum that any extra school levies charged by the schools needed the approval of the permanent secretary for Education.
“Textbooks is another area of concern. We have provided some textbooks, not all. The list must be clearly shown in all schools as to what textbooks have been supplied,” the permanent secretary said.
“Parents are only required to buy textbooks that are not supplied by MOE. Schools should not provide a list of those books that we supply.”
School managements have also been urged by the ministry not to disallow students into the school for late arrivals.
“Restrictions on students arriving late- some school heads have put a regulation of closing the gates,” Dr Lal said.
“Children are supposed to be at school rather than being sent home for arriving late. There are other good ways to tackle this problem.
“Now that we are moving into this scenarios of having IT in the schools, we’d like to see classrooms that can have more power points, fans, better table arrangements and more conducive for learning for children,” Dr Lal added.
The next education forum will be held on Thursday, August 8, 2013.
-ENDS-