Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia is wel­com­ing the call for a bet­ter ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem as sug­gest­ed by Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes dur­ing the Pres­i­dent’s Medal Award Cer­e­mo­ny 2018 Tues­day at NA­PA.

“Her Ex­cel­len­cy’s view is shared by us at the Min­istry as it co­in­cides with the work that the Min­istry is cur­rent­ly car­ry­ing out to im­prove the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem," Min­is­ter Gar­cia said.

He added: "We have been able to, over the past three years, not on­ly shift our fo­cus to pri­or­i­tiz­ing lit­er­a­cy, nu­mer­a­cy and pen­man­ship for all of our school-aged chil­dren, but al­so pro­vide our stu­dents with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­cel in sports as well as the vi­su­al and per­form­ing arts. We have em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of holis­tic teach­ing and learn­ing and this is be­ing re­flect­ed in the out­comes of our stu­dents. In this past aca­d­e­m­ic year, we record­ed the best per­for­mance in ten (10) years”.

A state­ment by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion says it con­tin­ues to work tire­less­ly to en­sure ac­cess, qual­i­ty and eq­ui­ty in ed­u­ca­tion for all stu­dents.

The min­istry says it is cur­rent­ly in the process of re­fin­ing a re­vised Ed­u­ca­tion Pol­i­cy aimed at the ef­fec­tive gov­er­nance and ad­min­is­tra­tion of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem; ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties by all learn­ers; and pro­vi­sion of qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion at all lev­els.

"This is the out­come of a three-day Na­tion­al Con­sul­ta­tion on Ed­u­ca­tion in 2016, where stake­hold­ers in both Trinidad and To­ba­go were en­gaged and con­cerns and rec­om­men­da­tions on the way for­ward were col­lat­ed and tak­en to Cab­i­net," the state­ment added.

It said the pol­i­cy was re­cent­ly tak­en to stake­hold­ers again for a fi­nal re­view to en­sure that the con­cerns raised in 2016 have been ad­e­quate­ly ad­dressed.

A fi­nal draft will be pre­sent­ed to Cab­i­net in the com­ing weeks for ap­proval pri­or to im­ple­men­ta­tion.