Education Minister Octavia Alfred has said that her ministry is looking forward to a very busy third term.
Schools in Dominica have reopened following a week-long Easter break and have now started the final term for the 2023-2024 academic school year.
“In addition to the assessment we will also see the closing of the Math Power Contest,” she said. “We will observe International Spanish Day, International Girls in ICT Day, we will have our science fair, World Books Day will be observed. The secondary school debate competition will also move into its final round.”
According to her, the District 4-H Festivals will be held, and in addition, the 4-H will also have a public speaking and a dinner plate competition this term.
“We see the beginning of the CSEC Exams, for the foreign languages CSEC will continue all the way up to May,” Alfred noted. “We will also do our Grade 6 National Assessment this term and for the very first time which is significant, the Grade 2 and Grade 4 national assessments which were previously administered in October will be administered in May.”
Alfred believes that this will give the Ministry of Education time to correct the assessment and to prepare remedial programs to address specific needs of groups of students so that they can begin this program as soon as the new school year begins.
“So, after marking the assessment, we will target common problems among all of the schools in Dominica, common weaknesses, and then we will prepare remedial programs to address these weaknesses,” she explains.
She continued, “This will give us enough time to train our teachers and to ensure that they have the materials, so that as soon as students enter Grade 3 and Grade 5 those who need this attention…can be given this attention as they begin the new school year.”
Alfred added, “We will also have library week, we will celebrate World Environment Day, World Safety Day. There will also be CXC, CCSLC [Caribbean Certificate of Secondary Level Competence] this term.”
Furthermore, she stated the achievements of special needs students will be celebrated this term.
Meanwhile, Alfred said there are some slight changes this term for school operations.
“The Sineku Primary School will operate in the same space with the Salybia Primary School, however it is a different kind of merger than what we saw in Delices and Laplaine,” Alfred explained. “Both schools will be in the same space, but they will operate independently.”
She further explained that a similar arrangement is also in place for Bellevue Primary School with the Grandbay Primary School.
She explained that these schools will be together, but will be operating as two independent schools.
“This is to ensure that the work begins at the Sineku Primary School and the Bellevue Primary School, because these two schools are part of the school building project sponsored by the People’s Republic of China,” Alfred stated. “So, we look forward to a very busy term.”
Is the Math Power Contest for Secondary schools? Maths is such an important subject, i suggest we have a competition amongst the Primary Schools also. You all will get help. I am sure many young retired teachers can help in this area. Many have told me so.
The education here at present is taking the students and the country. The system is in dire need of reforms to satisfy the demands of modernity.
Education should be more skill based and technologically oriented. Instead, learning by rote is still the preferred method that is exclusively used.
The education sector should have a visionary, collaborative, innovative, open-minded personnel at the top echelon of leadership.
It should equally cater for both skills and academics.
Excellent move to have the grade 2 and grade 4 assessments moved to May !