Senior secondary school students may soon have to undergo assessments to monitor how they are developing and coping with the stressors of life and to help them handle conflict in a healthier way.
Prime Minister Mia Mottley, speaking on Monday during a Community Mediation workshop at the Barbados Community College, said that the Ministry of Education was asked to introduce such an instrument to help their transition to adulthood be easier.
“I have asked the Ministry of Education to ensure that we introduce a diagnostic instrument in every secondary school for every third, fourth and fifth former so that we can see where they are.
“We have to come up with an individual plan that allows us to be better able to deliver and close the bridging deficit because if we don’t do it now, we will pay the price at some other point in our society and in our future,” Mottley said.
She acknowledged that the assessments will not be an easy assignment, but she suggested it was a priority, as the country continues to grapple with violence.
“It is not an easy task and therefore we believe before we get further into anything else in this school term that that diagnostic instrument is critical. It then allows the management of the schools and the education officers to make clear decisions as to what must happen.
“It’s a fancy term that seeks to get people to understand what becoming an adult is like, about choices that you have the ability to walk away from, and to understand that walking away does not make you a coward and when somebody steps on somebody’s foot it may well be an accident, give people the benefit of the doubt,” she added. (TG)
