District Education Officer for the West, Margaret Jules-Royer, calls for more manpower to help schoolchildren read and write better. She said that the Ministry of Education has prioritized the OECS/USAID Early Learners Programme which is also operative in Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
Under the first phase of the programme, teachers were trained on how to effectively teach schoolchildren for optimum class results. In this second phase, the education officer lamented that manpower is not sufficient and called for more skilled experts to join the train in helping young learners from Grade 1-3.
“We need more manpower,” she said. “From now, we District Education Officers also supervise and see the different strategies which are used in the classroom to help improve comprehension skills, fluency, decoding and all the various skills in literacy. It’s more about giving support to each other and strengthening that support at the school level.”
Jules-Royer linked early learning with optimum literacy scores, adding the CSEC programme of 2011 witnessed high results which have waned over the years. She expressed hopes that results will climb up again once the necessary support is given by parents, stakeholders, education officers, and the government.
She said the parents must assist with their children’s academics to complement what teachers teach them in school.
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