And yesterday, we told you that the mandatory minimum age for students to be in school will increase from 14 to 16. And on top of that, the government is rolling out a pilot project to provide free education to students attending school on the southside.
Today, we asked the Prime Minister more:
Hon. John Briceno, Prime Minister
"Eventually we are going to be keeping more kids in school, because if you look at the numbers I think at one time almost 50% of our kids were not going to high school. So now that means that that 50% will have to stay in primary school for another 2 years and obviously there is a cost to it and that's what we are talking about. It doesn't mean that the cost is going to be today, but probably in the year to come and so forth we'll have to be keeping them longer in school - we'll probably have to get more teachers, probably put more school buildings and providing for these kids especially if they come from underprivilege families, but more importantly I think what is revolutionary and maybe you all are missing it is that the ministry has changed its policy about passing kids because of age. They're saying now we're going to pass you by competency. Not because you are already 12 years old you have to go standard 6. If you're in standard 5 and you can't do the work for standard 5, you will not go to standard 6. You will repeat standard 5 so that then you could learn and then go on to standard 6. That is what is happening to a lot of our children, we're just pushing them through the system when they are not properly learning and secondly, what they are doing, they are reducing and compacting the courses that is going to be required. There is a website that you can look at on how is it that they are going to do, instead of having 13 or 14 courses, its going to be reduce so that we can concentrate on maths, science, english, reading, literature - so that they could be critical thinkers. Once a child could think critically you could put anything in front of them and they are going to do well."
