The Tribune

By RICARDO WELLS

Tribune Staff Reporter

rwells@tribunemedia.net

EDUCATION Minister Jerome Fitzgerald declared this week that his ministry will be ready for the 2015-2016 school year after “mobilising” between $6m and $7m to address annual school repairs across the country.

Six and a half weeks away from the start of the new school year, Mr Fitzgerald indicated that the Ministry of Education (MOE) has completed all of its primary reviews of school campuses and allocated the funding necessary to carry out the repairs.

According to Mr Fitzgerald on Wednesday, most of the work has already started as the ministry attempts to complete all the repairs before the reopening of schools on August 30.

“As usual, we started our repairs early and so we expect, as we have in the past three years or so, that we won’t have any challenges with those repairs being completed prior to school being opened,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mr Fitzgerald urged teachers contemplating retirement to make their decisions in a “timely fashion” to allow the MOE adequate time needed to contract potential replacements.

“I make the plea every year,” he said. “Last year many of them adhered to that (plea) and they sent in their resignations early which allowed us to make sure that we had teachers to replace them.

“As I said to them, they are going to get paid until the end of August so they don’t have to wait until September 1 to resign and we would appreciate if they exercise a degree of professionalism that is expected from teachers, particularly those in that position so that we don’t disadvantage our children.

“Once we know that there is an opening, if we are given the time, we need at least a month to six weeks to fill vacancies for teachers (to go) through all the vetting processes and all of that. So again, I encourage those teachers who intend to resign to do so early and to give us sufficient notice so that we can have the replacement.”

Mr Fitzgerald indicated that, on average, the MOE lose 25-30 teachers to retirement annually. He noted that, last year, only seven teachers decided to leave the profession.

“So that was a big improvement and we are hoping this year it will be even smaller than that.  I want to thank also the teachers who adhered to my plea last year and encourage those who intend to do the same this year and just give us sufficient notice.”

He said the MOE would be operating with a full complement of teachers in the upcoming school year. “With regard to speciality teachers, with regard to areas (in which) we had trouble in locating teachers before; math and sciences. For the first time, we didn’t have to go outside of the Bahamas to look for math teachers so it is a big improvement.

“The College of the Bahamas produced quite a number of math teachers for us and this is really through the co-ordination of the Ministry and the College of the Bahamas.”

However, he suggested that MOE had to re-work its budget to allow for the hiring of new teachers to address the ministry’s High School Diploma programme and proposed Achievement Unit, which would be geared towards monitoring students who “traditionally fall through educational gaps”.

“We have had to hire more teachers in regard to that and so we continue to support and supplement the teaching profession,” said Mr Fitzgerald. “I think we are going to be ready for the new school year. We are very excited – a lot of new initiatives that we have been planning over the last couple of years are coming in to force this year and I think that there is a sense of excitement going into the new school year and I want to ensure that continues.”

As a part of the 2015-2016 national fiscal budget, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology will be allocated nearly $81m, an increase of $12,652,667 from the previous year’s allocation of $68,269,775.

The Department of Education will also receive an increase of $7,974,296, bringing the department’s allocation to approximately $183m, up from last year’s $174.9m.

The department’s increase includes an additional allocation of more than $2m to aid a National Lunch Programme.