Training sessions on new Early Childhood Act begin
THE training workshop to kick-start the public education campaign on the new regulations and standards that will govern the early childhood sector was held last Tuesday.
More than 20 education officers from the Ministry of Education and Youth’s regions five and six participated in the workshop, which was staged at the Mandeville Resource Centre in Manchester.
The session was organised by the Enhancement of Basic Schools Project (EBSP) and the Early Childhood Commission (ECC).
EBSP consultant Janet Brown, who was the main presenter at Tuesday’s session, explained that it “is a training workshop for the education officers, who will be the ones (to conduct) workshops across the country in each of their zones”.
“We are running three workshops for education officers and then they in turn will offer up to 200 workshops, which will run between the first of February and the end of April,” Brown noted.
“(The training workshops) are to equip the education officers to answer all the questions that will arise in community-level workshops. We are trying to give them as much information as we can about the new (Early Childhood) Act and its regulations and requirements when registration begins,” she added.
The public education campaign, which is part of a five-year project being undertaken by the EBSP, will benefit the key stakeholders in the early childhood sector, including parents, teachers and the managers of institutions who will have an opportunity to hear how the regulations will affect them.
Education officer from Clarendon, Leonarah Chambers, said that the workshop was productive.
“(It) was very relevant. We are now approaching the registration process (and so) it prepares us to go and sensitise the relevant persons out there with what is to come,” Chambers said.
Suzette Smith, education officer from region five, agreed.
“The workshop is very good and as a new early childhood officer, I have benefited a lot. There are things that were discussed that I didn’t know or was not clear on. Many of those things were clarified. I believe that as I have benefited, so will those that I will impart to,” she said.
The public education campaign, meanwhile, is being held under the theme: “Start them right, make them bright” and is financed by the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) as well as the Government of Jamaica.
The next training workshops will be held in Kingston and Trelawny later this month. They will help to supplement sessions held by the Ministry of Education last year.
