Minister of Education, Youth, Sports and Culture Hon. Akierra Missick along with officials from the Ministry of Education continued their tour of the Nation’s Schools last week.
On Tuesday January 8, 2013, the Minister along with The Acting Permanent Secretary Cherylann Jones and Director of Education, Edgar Howell toured the Ianthe Pratt and Enid Capron Primary Schools. The Thursday of the same week, they visited the Clement Howell High and Oseta Jolly Primary Schools.
The purpose of these visits was among other things, to meet first hand with school principals and students; to see the physical conditions of the school and to hear from both the principals and students what they saw as some of the immediate needs of their schools. During the tour of each school, officials visited individual class rooms to meet and speak with the students.
Among the needs identified by the students were new play grounds, freshly painted class rooms, new books for the library and more play room. Most principals outlined their needs as auditoriums, repairs to fences, more lighting on the compounds and the construction of tuck shops or cafeterias where one can get ‘good’ food. They also saw the need to have sitting room to eat.
The tour continued on Friday January 11 when the Minister and her team visited schools on Grand Turk. Minister for Government Support Services (GSS) Hon. George Lightbourne and GSS’ Head of Secretariat Miss Kathy Watkin, joined the team on their visit to the H. J. Robinson High School.
Both Ministers pledged their commitment to address the needs of the school in “a structured way to ensure the most urgent needs are met as priority”. The officials expressed dismay at the physical condition of some of the schools visited and at the level of wall markings and litter on the compounds.
Students were charged to pay more attention to and to take more pride in their surroundings. The Officials also called on the students to form groups that will work with the prefects and other school officials to take care of their surroundings as well as to report instances when students were damaging or destroying school property.
The tour of schools will continue next on North, Middle, South Caicos and Salt Cay. These visits have been organised to allow both the Education and GSS Ministries to make adequate budget preparations for the coming fiscal year.
