THE Ministry of Education is encouraging independent or private schools to register with the ministry, warning that those that are unregistered could face sanctions or even be closed down if they fail to comply.

“It has always been documented that every school should be registered (with the ministry). If you have a branch somewhere else it should be registered as a separate school even if it carries the same name,” the education ministry’s registrar of independent schools, Yvonne Campbell, told the Observer last week.

She said while the ministry was looking at possible sanctions, it did not want to discourage persons from establishing institutions because of the demand for ongoing learning.

“We will be in touch with those (unregistered) schools and encourage them to register. If they refuse, then by law they can be closed down,” Campbell said, while urging members of the public to call the ministry’s Independent Schools Unit or the regional offices to verify whether private schools are registered.

“We will take no responsibility for anything that should happen at a school if it is not registered,” she warned.

Campbell said while the problem of unregistered schools was not widespread, there were some school proprietors who were in the habit of not registering their schools.

During an address to the Annual General Meeting of the Jamaica Independent Schools Association (JISA), in Kingston last week, Campbell said as part of the education transformation process, an inspectorate would be established which would, among other things, carry out audits of school curricula and facilities to ensure they meet standards for operation.

The registrar also said that the ministry was moving to establish equivalence between the service of teachers in public and private schools. She said if a teacher moved from an independent school to a public school, three years of service in an independent was counted as one year in a public school. This move has implications for pension calculations.

She said, too, that a new policy for independent schools was being developed to guide matters such as the assessment of principals, teachers, procedures for the hiring and firing of teachers, the expulsion of students and the refund of fees.

Immediate past president of JISA, Donovan Isaacs, said that registering with the ministry was a separate process to registering the name of the school with the Companies Office of Jamaica.

Isaacs was succeeded as president of JISA by principal of St Andrew Preparatory, Renee Rattray.