Deputy Premier and Minister of Education, Youth, Sport and Library Service Hon. Akierra M D Missick - Ministerial Statement on 2016/2017 Academic School Year
Today dawns a bright new start to our renewed journey to brighten and enlighten the minds of our future generation. With two months of vacation behind and a year of exciting education before us, I welcome over 4,000 students to our new school year.
Today I also welcome our hard working teachers, principals, vice principals and other staff to the 2016/2017 school year and wish them all an excellent and amazing academic year.
I am eager to meet new students and teachers and continue this annual process of seeing first-hand the parts of our system that are working and those that need attention. To that end, I have started my annual school visitation circuit on day one. We have come a long way in the development of education and we face all of our challenges with the confidence that we will find opportunity in each challenge and grow to provide better educational benefits to the people of the Turks and Caicos Islands.
As Minister of Education, Youth, Sports and Library Services, I can report the following infrastructural works that are ongoing:
• The H. J. Robinson rebuild is progressing and we expect that to be delivered by end of October. This building was lost to fire in early January and we were able through the support of cabinet colleagues to quickly appropriate the necessary funds to move this rebuild along in record time.
• We are in the tender process for a major redevelopment of the CHHS to address critical structural and refurbishing issues that will change the face of that institution.
• The Eliza Simons Primary School benefitted from some upgrading and we will soon be commissioning a new 10 classroom block.
• The Ona Glinton Primary School has three new early childhood classrooms; furniture and playground equipment will arrive by the end of September.
• Phase 3 of Long Bay High will begin soon.
Our capital project list is not complete, all schools will benefit but the priority projects have taken the lead.
All principals, vice principals and education officers met with the Director of Education and Permanent Secretary last Friday. That meeting updated school officials about pending projects and gave an outline of the Ministry’s expectations. All schools will benefit from the upgrading of ICT and will receive new computers. All schools will by the end of the year be part of the new Education Information System, making it easier to track students’ performance, absenteeism and general performance.
This week we will launch a pilot for the National Curriculum Review. This review is expected to redefine how and what we teach and learn in the Islands.
Parents as usual, we call on you as our partners to work with us and support the work of your children and school. We continue to emphasize that it is only through partnerships we can achieve the goals of our Education System. Together we can, together we must.
Now that we have all made it to the new school year, LET THE LEARNING BEGIN!!! Welcome back to school and may God bless us all as we educate for our advancement.