THE GOVERNMENT intends to implement a mandatory parenting education programme for the mothers and fathers of students, as it continues its attempts to boost the nation's academic performance islandwide.
The programme will be much in line with a plan already in place at the St. Elizabeth Technical High School, and will probably include six weeks of comprehensive sessions on parenting skills and counselling of teenagers.
Maxine Henry-Wilson, Minister of Education, Youth and Culture, told journalists yesterday that the programme, to be administered through each school's Parent-Teacher Association, would aid parents to better cope with their children and understand the workings of the school environment.
"The idea is that we need to find a way for the school to have an encounter with the parents without it being on the basis of some difficulty that the child met," the Education Minister said during a post-Sectoral Debate press conference at Jamaica House.
MINISTRY TEAM
She and a team from her Ministry were responding to questions about the proposal to 'commit' parents to such a programme which was announced during her contribution to the Sectoral Debate in the House of Representatives on Tuesday.
"One of the things that Mrs. (Pamela) Harrison did at Wolmer's is that every parent had to come in to see her, especially Grade 7," the Education Minister said. Mrs. Harrison is the former principal of Wolmer's Girls School, one of the top-ranked schools in the recently released Minott Report on the performance of secondary-level schools in the 2003 CXC examinations.
On Tuesday, Mrs. Henry-Wilson told the House of Representatives that the home is a critical factor in a child's education. She argued that there was a need to increase parental involvement and awareness as a part of the Government's 'broad-based approach to providing quality' education.
In February, Iris Lewis, principal of the Crescent Primary School in Spanish Town, St. Catherine, told a Gleaner Editors' Forum that she believed the lack of participation by parents was one of the main contributors to illiteracy in the town. Truancy, she noted, was the other contributing factor.
