Principals association unhappy with ministry's process to resume face-to-face classes

 

Linvern Wright, President of the Jamaica Association of Principals of Secondary Schools, is not happy with how the Ministry of Education has gone about the resumption of face-to-face classes at some schools.

 

Mr. Wright argued that the data used to select the schools, should have included their readiness, as the time for preparation is too short.

 

Despite an apology from ministry officials, he has also chastised the Ministry of Education for the unofficial way the original selected schools were made aware of the development.

 

Mr. Wright said he is disappointed with the ministry, as the agreed formula for the resumption of face-to-face classes, which included adequate consultation with principals, seems to not have been followed.

 

"In fact, when I spoke to one of them, he said, “Mr. Wright, I can't be” and it was more, "You get the impression that, you know, they (the principals) just feel so disrespected that they were hearing about this in the media because this calls for meticulous planning. This calls for careful planning and mobilization of your staff, of your ancillary staff, of the people to clean up, of the people to actually train the students - because you have to retrain them again depending on who it is you're going to be dealing with - and this risk assessment would also have taken in the readiness of the school. So you wonder now about this formula that is being used, whether or not those factors that they had claimed to have been apart of it would have been in it," he contended.  

 

He said stakeholders on the E-Covid Taskforce were also told that the health inspection report would have formed part of the analysis for the resumption of physical school.

 

But he also complained about the taskforce itself, calling for the group to be revamped. 

 

"The ministry needs to revamp the people who chair this. I know it's the minister who does it - no disrespect to her - but maybe they have too many things doing so some little things are leaving them behind. You don't get the impression, for example, that the technocrats at the Ministry of Health are involved. You don't get the impression that the people who are doing the operational work in the Ministry of Education are involved, your directors. It seems to me that if you had your regional directors and your principals working at a local level, who know what is happening, to deal with this thing, it would have been a much better thing. Those discussions are kinda not invited at the taskforce, you know," he bemoaned. 

 

Three schools, which have opted out of the pilot programme, have been replaced.