Catholic/Anglican schools support free textbook project
Government’s plan to provide free textbooks to primary school students has met as much criticism as praise. The formal announcement came at the end of June and on Monday the Ministry of Education will be holding a press conference to release the details of its National Textbook Programme. Under the initiative, text books will be standardised and free of cost. Today Clement Wade, General Manager of the country’s Catholic Schools, told News Five he’s happy to see a political promise finally become a reality.
Clement Wade, Catholic General Manager
“For more than fifteen years now we have been trying to rationalise text books, yes, some people may not have gotten the books that they want, but I don’t see that there was too much of a lack of consultation.”
“I have almost a hundred schools that are in rural and about sixty that are in about very rural areas and these schools, definitely children cannot afford text books, so I think any organisation, any group, that could put text books in the hands of every single child, especially in those areas can’t go wrong.”
“All teachers have been informed, in fact, all teachers will be in service in early August for two weeks on the philosophy and the use of the new text books.”
“I would just like to say to teachers for them to keep and open mind. Most of the district centres the text books are available for them to scrutinise even now. They should go in and look at them, take their time, and then make a judgement on them after the in service.”
For her part, General Manager of Anglican Schools, Carol Babb, agrees with the idea behind the textbook programme but says consultations have been lacking. In an interview this afternoon Babb said that such an important decision should have had the input of the educators.
Carol Babb, G.M., Anglican Schools
“We were not consulted about the kinds of books that were on the booklist. We were shown the books after the consultation took place. I think as general manager of Anglican Schools, none of my principals were consulted. I think most of the books are excellent books, but I think we should have had a say as to what books we feel are the best for the children in our schools.”
“The books are good, some of them are good. However, most of my principals feel that they would like to use the BRC reading for the first three years and the math for the first three years, but I don’t have a problem with the other books, so we will use those as supplementary readers.”
“It’s a pity that I don’t have any of the infant teachers, but they find that the BRC readers particularly are very helpful to teach phonics and it helps children to decode and to read better and they have asked me to allow them to use those books for infant one, infant two, and standard one.”
“I really think it’s a very, very good initiative, especially for those parents who have a large number of children attending school and some parents find it very difficult to buy all the needed books for the children, so I think this will be quite a relief for those parents who need that kind of help.”
The Ministry of Education’s press conference is scheduled to begin at ten on Monday morning at the House of Culture. Panellists will include the Minister of Education, Chief Education Officer, the Director of QUADS, and management of the primary schools.
