Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Michael Dowlath says he will be re­view­ing de­tails about the op­er­a­tions and work­ings of the min­istry, pro­vid­ed by se­nior staff, to see what aligns with the Gov­ern­ment’s plans.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Dowlath said: “We went in and we got the brief. I have to look at the brief in de­tail and see what ex­ists and the align­ment with our man­i­festo goals.”

The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter is sup­port­ed by Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing Min­is­ter Prof Prakash Per­sad and par­lia­men­tary sec­re­tary in the min­istry, Hansen Nar­i­nesingh.

Dowlath said that by Fri­day, he may be able to com­ment on what, if any­thing, in the brief he re­ceived from the min­istry aligns with the Gov­ern­ment’s poli­cies.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress man­i­festo, re­leased dur­ing the Gen­er­al Elec­tion cam­paign, there are three ma­jor ar­eas with sub-cat­e­gories.

The first area is the prepa­ra­tion of chil­dren to max­imise ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties. This will look at hir­ing neu­rode­vel­op­ment spe­cial­ists and re­view­ing the role and func­tion of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty and the Stu­dents’ Sup­port Ser­vices. There are plans to have uni­ver­sal screen­ing for chil­dren be­tween the ages of four to six, with a spe­cial­ist in neu­rode­vel­op­ment en­gaged to as­sist in plan­ning and car­ry­ing out the screen­ing. The doc­u­ment al­so iden­ti­fied a com­put­erised track­ing sys­tem for stu­dents.

Step two fo­cus­es on parental roles, with a promise to pro­vide train­ing for par­ents and care­givers, which will be vol­un­tary. This is in­tend­ed to be a part­ner­ship with the pri­vate sec­tor.

The third as­pect be­gins with the stu­dents’ sup­port sys­tem, which in­cludes dig­i­tal de­vices, es­tab­lish­ing lit­er­a­cy li­braries, and re­view­ing and im­prov­ing home­work cen­tres.

The UNC, dur­ing its cam­paign­ing, said it planned to hire re­tired ed­u­ca­tors, cre­ate spe­cial­ist teach­ers and es­tab­lish mas­ter teacher po­si­tions to achieve this ob­jec­tive.

As for ex­am­i­na­tions, the Gov­ern­ment plans to rein­tro­duce a con­tin­u­ous as­sess­ment com­po­nent for pri­ma­ry schools on a phased ba­sis as part of the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) pro­gramme.

To ad­dress bul­ly­ing at schools and over­all crime, the Gov­ern­ment has said it in­tends to in­tro­duce the Parental Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty Act, which it claimed was pro­posed in 2017, that will leg­isla­tive­ly hold way­ward par­ents to ac­count. —Jensen La Vende