ROSEAU, Dominica – Dominica’s Education Minister Octavia Alfred has endorsed moves by the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) to implement a harmonized primary school curriculum intended to transform the education system in the sub-region.
Primary school students in the Caribbean (File Photo)Speaking at a ceremony here on Tuesday night, Alfred said the Programme for Education Advancement and Relevant Learning (PEARL) is a transformative initiative that is re-shaping the educational landscape across the OECS.
“This programme plays a crucial role in enhancing our educational system by ensuring that all students receive a quality, relevant and inclusive education.
“Through the PEARL we are strengthening the foundation of our education system, equipping our teachers and school leaders with the skills and knowledge necessary to foster academic excellence and holistic development in our students.”
Alfred said over the years, emphasis has been placed “on pushing the academic excellence, everything is test driven, everything is assessment driven.
“School is stressful, school has become too stressful. Nobody likes school…big bags of books, long curriculum, plenty tests and that is what the OECS PEARL is trying to change. To take us back to a place where learning was fun and children can begin to sing schooldays are very happy days and when they grow up they will still sing, school days were very happy days,” the Education Minister said.
Senior technical specialist on the OECS PEARL programme, Royston Emmanuel, told the ceremony that the harmonized primary schools curriculum will transform the system of education in OECS.
“Some people call it the digital curriculum, the digitise curriculum. I say the D is for anything. Dynamic, differentiated, anything that brings positivity and change in the classroom,” he said, adding that in designing the curriculum, while the children had been put first, “we always had you the teachers, you the school leaders in mind”.
Alfred said that the initiative is an opportunity for teachers to decide “what you want to use (and) what can make your classrooms better, what can make the practice better and employ it in the classrooms.
‘This is an OECS initiative, not a PEARL initiative, but an OECS commissioned initiative. This is our initiative. We own it. We are beginning the micro pilot. We are in the process of onboarding teachers, getting pilot schools ready and we just want to implore teachers, take time, explore, try this out, you can’t break anything.
“The new curriculum is trying transformative, it focuses on the holistic development of the child, not just on the cognitive, but also the affected. We want to bring fun back into schools,” Emmanuel added.
