MANDEVILLE, Manchester — Belair High, privately run for many years, is to become government-aided in September and Church Teachers’ College will house an assessment and training centre for children with learning disabilities by year-end, says Education Minister Ronald Thwaites.

The Minister who was speaking recently at a back-to-school conference organised by the Ministry of Education’s Region 5 (Manchester, St Elizabeth) confirmed that more than 100 students from the recent Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) had been placed at Belair for the September term.

Thwaites said the long-term aim was to increase the capacity and population at Belair.

“I am glad to tell you that with an arrangement with the board of directors of the Belair School in Mandeville, Belair will accept government grant-aided status in September of this year,” Thwaites told his audience of teachers, school board members, parents, students, ministry representatives, members of parliament, parish councillors and other stakeholders.

“We will build…up [the number of students] over time into a … larger secondary school, a place of excellence, as it has been privately in the past,” he said.

Chairman of the board of directors of the Belair High School Trevor Heaven told Observer Central that while the high school including the sixth form will have the financial backing of government, Belair’s kindergarten and preparatory departments will remain private. Heaven noted that Belair was started in the heyday of the bauxite/alumina industry in central Jamaica, initially to fill the educational needs of the children of expatriates. Due to a decline in the bauxite/alumina industry and the eventual closure of two major plants — Alpart and Kirkvine — four years ago, it gradually became less viable to operate privately, he said.

Regarding the “fully equipped diagnostic centre” to be located at Church Teachers’ College, Thwaites said that for too long, special education has been left to “the goodness of churches and people of great heart and philanthropy”.

The country could no longer continue with only three per cent of the education budget going to special and early childhood education, the minister said.

He argued that “We have had our priorities wrong….. upside down, dictated by our history where early childhood and special education was seen for many decades as being a private issue … It now becomes under the Charter of Rights… a matter of state responsibility that we must carry out.”

Thwaites said the new special education facility will ensure “that you in this region no longer have to undertake a pilgrimage of hope, yet distress, to the Mico Care Centre in Kingston.

“You will be able to ensure that your children who have special needs, who have to be diagnosed… [receive] therapy so that they can take their place, so that they can learn and must learn, that it will be done at much less expense and convenience here in Mandeville. Our special education children… must be at the heart of our revived and transformed system.”

According to the minister, approximately 20 per cent of children in the school population have special needs. He visualised that by 2015, there will be at least one teacher in every school with special education training.

“It takes a special heart and personality to fulfil that role. Teachers who are already in the system and who feel an urge and a need to…. devote themselves to this area are invited through their regional office to apply for special training,” he said.

Thwaites urged teachers not to “barrel ahead with the curriculum” when students have obvious deficiencies resulting in the subject matter not being grasped.

“It is not a shame if a teacher is having trouble to inculcate the proper levels of literacy and numeracy to ask for help. It is rather a sign of their interest, commitment and accountability that they should ask for help. We must assist you in every way that we possibly can on this national pilgrimage of vision and achievement,” he said.

Other stakeholders such as parent teachers associations, school boards, community leaders and parents should also take an interest, he said.

Outlining infrastructural work being done in schools in Manchester and St Elizabeth, Thwaites spoke of plans for a high school section to be rolled out at the Mount St Joseph Preparatory School in Mandeville, by next year.

Early in the new financial year, additional facilities provided by the Culture, Health, Arts, Sports, and Education (CHASE) Fund, should be in place at the Mandeville Primary and Junior High School as part of an effort to eliminate the shift system, he said.

Also, funding approved by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) will ensure additional space at the McIntosh Memorial and Zion Hill Primary Schools in Manchester.

For St Elizabeth, Thwaites said an “extraordinarily ambitious and optimistic improvement” is likely to take place at the “underused” Sydney Pagon Agricultural High School in Elim.

Thwaites reiterated that close to two hundred schools still reliant on pit latrines across Jamaica should have flush toilet facilities by the end of next year.

“…I am glad to say that with the assistance of the Petrocaribe Fund, of the CHASE Fund, as well as Ministry Funds, we see the likelihood that by the end of 2014 pit latrines in schools can become a thing of the past,” he said.

More than 60 such schools should have flush facilities by the end of this year, he said.