A total of 61 delinquent early childhood institutions (ECIs) have been warned for closure after failing to apply for registration.

As of March 31, 2022, there were 2,373 ECIs in operation of which 2,312 have applied to be formally registered.

The delinquent schools consist of a mixture of those who did not re-register and others who have been delinquent for a long time.

According to Section (3) of the Early Childhood Act (2005), “No person shall operate an early childhood institution unless that institution is registered under this Act.”

Chairman of Regulations and Certification Committee at ECC David Salmon said ECC had sent a list of the delinquent schools to the Minister of Education and Youth Fayval Williams to decide on which schools will be shut down.

“However, we at the ECC, especially at the certification committee level, also have important stakeholders such as the Jamaica Constabulary Force, and the Ministry of Health and Wellness and the strategies we are going to be doing in the interim while we wait for the response for those schools,” said Salmon who was speaking at the launch of ECC’s Assessment Report of Early Childhood Institutions March 2022 on Wednesday.

Salmon also mentioned that the number of delinquent schools have dropped from 140, as of February 26, 2021.

The report revealed that there are eight delinquent schools in region one which covers Kingston and St Andrew, 11 in region two which covers Portland, St Mary, St Thomas and eight in region three which covers St Ann and Trelawny.

In region four, which covers St James, Hanover and Westmoreland, there are 14 delinquent schools, three in region five which covers St Elizabeth and Manchester and eight in region six which covers St Catherine.

Meanwhile, director of regulation and monitoring at ECC Tracy-Ann Morgan-Smith explained that the time period given to delinquent schools to get up to standard could last from a month up to a year.

Explaining the reason, Morgan Smith said, “For example, a teacher needing training has a year in which to register to start formalised training. Things like a police record or so you have a month in which to get.

Technically too, looking at raw scores, it is very individualistic to institutions, for example — the requirement for an institution to all their staff, as part of the performance indicator in an inspection, it is important that we know that these persons have no criminal records and so on. Now if I have 15 members of staff at my institution and 12 have a police record and three don’t, I have not met the performance indicator of the standard. Then you would see that a month is given for these two persons.We have to ensure that no member of staff poses a risk to any of the children.”