Monday 13 March 2006
Four out of five schools do not achieve the educational objectives
CURACAO – From a presentation given by the outgoing Education-minister Maritsa Silberie (UPB) to the Central Committee of Parliament it turned out that 80 percent of the schools for basic education (FO) on the island do not achieve the objectives for this type of education.
Only 20 percent of the schools have fully introduced the FO. What the consequences are, we don’t know yet, because there are no specific information. Silberie promised a quick scan on this. After hearing these remarks, independent Parliament member, Leonard Coffi is kind of worried. We need an analysis on the pressure point.
It means that the FO didn’t work for the great majority of the school children in the age of 4 to 8 years. The program needs to be re-adjusted in order to prevent that this would be also the case with the new groups.
Coffi says that the Central-Committee meeting with Silberie didn’t bring much clarification.
The Parliament members didn’t receive a copy of the presentation. She didn’t point out the education-objectives that didn’t make it, but she is under the impression that it’s not the minor subjects, but the primary education objectives, like arithmetic, reading, and writing.
She couldn’t tell whether the teachers didn’t teach the students these skills in accordance with the FO, or they didn’t do it at all. It is possible that due to lack of material and not enough training for the primary education objectives, the teachers have decided to use the traditional teaching method.
What research did Silberie base these percentages on, is not clear. What we do know is that the ministry of Education did an evaluation on the introduction of the FO on all the islands, which result was supposed to be ready in January. But according to Coffi, the Education-minister indicated that the evaluation was partially done and she promised to make a quick scan.
We don’t know though how long this quick scan is going to take and when we can expect the results.
We are already in March and at the beginning of this new academic year the students of group 4 of cycles 1 have to move on to group 5 of the second cycle.
Coffi is of the opinion that these students have to be tested to see where they fail in their development. He hopes that the analysis of the quick scan will give something to hold on to.
Silberie was again not available for comments for the Amigoe.
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