MANDEVILLE, Manchester — Seventy principals and teachers from 35 primary schools in Manchester, Clarendon, Portland, St Elizabeth, and St Catherine are being trained in Information Communication Technology (ICT) under the Enrichment Programme, a partnership between the Digicel Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development.

The schools, classified as ‘underperforming’, represent the second batch of institutions being thus engaged.

Carried out in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, the training programme is expected to equip teachers with specific skills to improve students’ performance in literacy and numeracy. Over 11,000 students currently enrolled in these schools will benefit from the resources and teaching strategies being provided.

Dr Andre Hill, National Literacy Coordinator in the Ministry of Education, noted the improvements recorded with the first batch of schools, saying: “The feedback from the literacy officers working with the 31 schools from the first group is that the interventions have significantly impacted the advancement of reading. The results from the Grade Four Literacy Test have also reflected an improvement in the literacy rates from these schools.”

Tajna Pryce, mathematics specialist, Region 5 said the Ministry of Education hopes to maximise on the efforts and resources provided so that it can better utilise its limited resources to provide assistance where it is most needed.

“Teachers need a lot of support, especially (those) from rural schools where they may not necessarily have regular access to the learning resources provided by Digicel Foundation. Also, they may not know how to effectively use them. Training sessions like these that offer on-going teacher development opportunities are critical to addressing systemic issues.”

The third and final batch of 29 schools will be identified to achieve a total of 95 schools under the extended partnership Enrichment Programme.

“It is only through collaboration that we can continue to achieve more as a country. The Digicel Foundation remains confident that we can attain extraordinary results in education if we pool our resources and ideas,” said Samantha Chantrelle, CEO of the Digicel Foundation.