Santa Cruz, St Elizabeth

Member of Parliament for North East St Elizabeth, Kern Spencer, is calling on Government to develop a special programme to lift literacy levels in St Elizabeth.

Arguing that this south western parish often described as Jamaica’s ‘bread basket’ has one of the highest rates of illiteracy, Spencer said the Ministry of Education should set up a “special unit” in a concerted bid to correct the problem.

Spencer believes illiteracy is being aided and abetted by a long-standing practice of keeping children from school on some days of the week – particularly on Fridays – to help farming parents in the fields and at the market. The MP says the Ministry of Education should launch a public education campaign which focuses on the “need to send children to school every day”.

Spencer who was speaking recently at the launch of a programme to provide free breakfasts to children at the Bogue All Age School also urged special attention to run-down and unsuitable physical infrastructure at some schools which he claimed made learning difficult.

He pointed to design faults which rendered classrooms “without proper ventilation” and unbearably hot.

Spencer who says he has dedicated $1.25 million of his Constituency Development Fund for support services to schools in his constituency, pledged $100,000 to the breakfast programme at the Bogue All Age.

Paulette Burnett- Foster, the school’s Guidance Counsellor said the breakfast programme which is starting on a phased basis – two days weekly to begin with before gradually getting to all five days – was born of everyday experience that “children don’t learn well on empty stomachs”. In some cases she said children had fainted during devotion time at the start of the school day because they had left home without a proper meal.

She praised parents and the community for pulling together to make the programme possible.