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400 More Trained Teachers for Early Childhood Sector

JIS: The Ministry of Education, Youth and Information will be placing an additional 400 trained teachers in basic schools and infant departments as part of measures to strengthen early-childhood education.

 

State Minister in the Ministry, Hon. Floyd Green, said the initiative will be done through the Housing, Opportunity, Prosperity, Employment (HOPE) programme.

 

“These are trained teachers, who will be assigned throughout the region. Clearly, we are going to target those schools that don’t have any,” he said.

 

HOPE is a one-stop shop for Government’s social-intervention programmes.

 

It incorporates several initiatives that are being undertaken by various ministries/agencies to benefit communities and the most vulnerable groups in the society, namely children, persons with disabilities, the elderly, pregnant and lactating mothers, and the unemployed.

 

Mr. Green was delivering greetings at the University of the West Indies School of Education’s Training of the Trainers workshop held on Thursday (April 27) at the Alhambra Inn.

 

Turning to other initiatives in early-childhood development, he cited the move to introduce a new early-stimulation programme, which will prepare children for learning while they are still in the womb.

 

“We actually started and we actually put in some money last year to do some preliminary work. It is going to be a collaborative effort (involving) the Ministries of Education; Labour and Social Security; and Health,” he informed.

 

“We will be targeting, first and foremost, those parents on the Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH), and the Early Childhood Commission will be leading that charge,” Mr. Green said.