Basseterre, St. Kitts, August 11, 2020 (SKNIS): From August 10 to 14, and August 17, 2020, the Ministry of Education will be finalizing the preparations to pilot its enhanced curriculum, says Chief of Education Planning, Dr. Neva Pemberton.
Dr. Pemberton stated that over the past two years the Ministry of Education has been working with multiple stakeholders to develop a curriculum that is student centered, responds to all the interests and needs of its learners, does a much better job of assessing students’ ability and measuring their successes.
During the week, the ministry will be training its pilot implementation team, which is comprised of education officials, curriculum officers, as well as curriculum writers, said Dr. Pemberton.
“It’s this pilot implementation team that is going to be responsible for also training our principals with the kind of leadership skills that they need to monitor the new enhanced curriculum and also to train our teachers in how to implement the various components of this enhanced curriculum,” she said.
The ministry will be piloting the curriculum this year at Grades four and six, said Dr. Pemberton.
“For those of you in the viewing audience that are not aware of the enhancement process to date, we now will have five core subjects in which students will have exposure to,” said the Chief of Education Planning. “We will now have language arts, social studies, science, mathematics and a new course called health and wellness, which brings into consideration the psycho-social well-being of our students, physical education, wellness, support and also health and family life education.”
The training this week is being done by a team of consultants including Mind Bloom Consulting in conjunction with Saint Francis Xavier University out of Canada and is being held on the virtual learning platform Microsoft Teams.
Beginning next week, from August 18, those who are being trained this week, that is, the pilot implementation team, will be providing leadership to principals and school leaders in how to support the curriculum enhancement process, said Dr. Pemberton.
She added that beginning August 24, 2020, until September 02, 2020, the ministry will also be training its teachers how to use the enhanced curriculum.
Dr. Pemberton stated that because it is a pilot, the ministry views the year as a trial and error period for all of them to learn together how to best use the curriculum and also how to enhance it.
“So, over the coming weeks and coming months, we’re going to be collaborating on strengthening our curriculum documents and ensuring that they really do enable students success,” said the Chief of Education Planning.
