Lee An­na Ma­haraj

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

A 62 per cent de­crease in schools’ par­tic­i­pa­tion in the 2023 Ju­nior Panora­ma Com­pe­ti­tion has been blamed on the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion drop­ping one of its mu­sic pro­grammes.

In 2020, the com­pe­ti­tion had 67 schools par­tic­i­pat­ing, which was a record-high num­ber. How­ev­er, this year there are on­ly 25 schools in the com­pe­ti­tion. Ini­tial­ly, there were 25 schools---17 sec­ondary schools and 11 pri­ma­ry schools--but three sec­ondary schools with­drew from the com­pe­ti­tion.

Cur­ricu­lum Co­or­di­na­tor at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion Marce­line Pe­ters said one rea­son for this drop in par­tic­i­pa­tion is the ab­sence of the Mul­ti-Cul­tur­al Mu­sic Pro­gramme Unit (MM­PU).

“These mu­sic in­struc­tors would have played a great part in prepar­ing schools to have that abil­i­ty to com­pete,” she said, adding that the con­tract with the MM­PU end­ed dur­ing the quar­an­tine pe­ri­od and was not re­newed.

Chair­man of Pan Trin­ba­go’s Youth Arm Rudo Forteau said the pro­gramme played a crit­i­cal part in shap­ing school bands.

“This is the prob­lem be­cause when you had one arranger who nor­mal­ly dealt with bands from rur­al south, that one arranger would go and ser­vice five or six schools. I don’t think if that arranger is no longer em­ployed if he has the in­cen­tive or the mo­ti­va­tion to con­tin­ue.

“The MM­PU is a ma­jor, ma­jor loss to the Na­tion­al Ju­nior Panora­ma where the schools are con­cerned, and I think we should look at that. It was work­ing be­fore, and I think that’s the rea­son why we have a low turnout. The com­mu­ni­ca­tion broke down be­cause where you could have reached out to the dis­trict co­or­di­na­tors to get feed­back with­in their dis­trict, we don‘t have that any­more. So, that’s the rea­son why I would say that’s why the reg­is­tra­tion has fall­en,” he said.

Forteau said de­spite the de­cline in school par­tic­i­pa­tion, he is ex­pect­ing a great show be­cause the few schools in the com­pe­ti­tion have been per­form­ing well.

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said the min­istry plans to bring the pro­gramme back with some ad­just­ments. She said al­though the past two years were dif­fi­cult for stu­dents and school bands, see­ing the few schools par­tic­i­pat­ing was heart­warm­ing and she looks for­ward to see­ing the schools that could not par­tic­i­pate back in the com­pe­ti­tion next year.