MOUNTAIN SPRING, Trelawny — The Ministry of Education has revealed that for the first time in the country’s history, students leaving primary schools are now being clinically assessed to identify those with learning disorders and provide recommendations on how to have them addressed.

Permanent secretary in the Ministry of Education Dr Kasan Troupe told a question-and-answer session at the Jamaica Teachers’ Association’s (JTA’s) 60th Annual Conference in Trelawny on Wednesday that the assessments were being done based on the the Primary Exit Profile (PEP) results.

“All of the students who we identified that failed the literacy and numeracy have been clinically assessed and we have an assessment report that will inform how these students should be treated within their new classrooms,” the permanent secretary said.

“We do know that there are challenges in the system but we are catching up. This year, for the first time, we identified those students who did not do very well at the grade four and five level in their PEP because we know that those student, if the issues are not fixed, then it will move on with them at the high school,” stated Troupe.

The assessment of special needs students, she said, is an expensive venture for parents and as a result when PEP was designed the idea was to assess students who are underperforming.

Troupe said the ministry had intended to do the assessment process earlier but as a result of changes and the COVID-19 pandemic, it is only now being implemented for the first time.

“We want to celebrate that. What we want now is for this information to be used. We want to make sure that the system is designed to guide the learning programme for those children within our inclusive settings,” stated Troupe.

“It’s again organising students around their needs. We have the coaches that are in the system to help you and we have specialists or special education providers. They go out and they work with our principals. You call us. We observe that some students may need some additional support [so] we organise the assessment of the students.

“Then, once those results come back, we call you [educators]. We set up a date with you and we come back to meet with you to present the report, and then we present the report to the parents of these children. A plan is then developed coming out of the recommendations from the specialists,” said Troupe.

“Some of us in this space are conversant with it because we are working with you. If you have never experienced this, reach out to your region [office],” encouraged Troupe.

“In addition to that, we are building out for our colleges to assist us with the assessment services. So, we have one in the West [Sam Sharpe Teachers’ College]. We have one in Church [Teachers’ College in Manchester]. We have one in Kingston, which is Mico [University College] Care Centre. And we are building out a facility in Region Two at CASE [College of Agriculture, Science and Education] for that [northern] side of the island,” added Troupe.

In the meantime, the permanent secretary said partnerships have been created also between the ministry and 17 private schools that offer segregated support services for autism, etc.

“We have partnered with them and we have purchased spaces at the cost of the service to our regular parents. So, for example, it may be 400,000 [or] 433,000 plus in some schools. But there is no less than 300,000 per space because that’s what that school would charge our regular parents.

“We pay for that and we place those students in those schools. Those are the partnerships. However, we have seen where it’s limited in some areas and that’s why we have to build out our facilities as a public service because some private schools are not necessarily where we want them to be. But that’s the kind of robust approach we have for special education,” Troupe said in response to a question from a teacher of 27 years, who gave her name as Sutherland-Grant, from the Ocho Rios area.

The teacher wanted to know what the ministry’s plans were to address the special needs of children in the Ocho Rios area, after she pointed out that each year she had to teach children with special needs at her school even though she has no training in special needs.

“I take it seriously because I have a student who left my class just in June of this year and that child was placed at the Steer Town High School. Now, I know that child cannot cope there based on the autism spectrum that that child is on,” said the teacher.

She added: “There are many children who are at home in the Ocho Rios area who have no school to go to because [high schools in the area] cannot take them, even though those schools have special needs facilities.”