The Government is willing to go as far as undertaking management of early childhood education institutions in a move to upgrade infrastructure and address resources challenges, Senator Dr Dana Morris Dixon has revealed.

Morris Dixon, the minister of education, skills, youth and information, disclosed the Administration’s thinking during the two-day Dudley Grant Early Childhood Education Resource Centre colloquium held at The University of the West Indies Regional Headquarters in St Andrew on Thursday.

“Many of our early childhood institutions are private non-governmental entities, so what we have been doing is offering to some … to work with them and the Government take them on completely,” Morris Dixon said in her presentation on day one of the confab.

“It is very important to us, and we are continuing. Some have agreed and some said ‘No, we prefer to remain independent’,” Morris-Dixon added.

She said that although the Government will not have purview control over the operations of the entities that disagreed with the suggestion, the Administration is committed to providing the necessary support where possible.

While the confab was planned long before Hurricane Melissa hit sections of Jamaica on October 28, the Category 5 storm’s impact on the early childhood education sector dragged the issue of building standards into the discussions.

Morris Dixon agreed with the conference organisers’ view that there is need for greater climate resilience in the design of buildings hosting early childhood institutions.

“We cannot use old standards and expect that when infrastructure meets new and worst disasters that they won’t be devastated; they are going to be, and so all new projects have to be executed against stronger standards,” the minister said.

She told the conference that on Wednesday a meeting was held with the Jamaica Independent Schools Association and the Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ) to look at ways in which independent schools can benefit from the $1-billion that has been made available through approved financial institutions and micro finance institutions to help small businesses recover after the hurricane.

Early childhood education expert Professor Zoyah Kinkead-Clarke, who is also deputy dean, graduate studies, at The UWI’s Faculty of Humanities and Education, argued that the sector remains vulnerable because it is often exempted and does not have the necessary resources.

“The minister spoke about building back stronger, but the reality is, many of these early childhood institutions are struggling to pay the rent. Where are they going to get the funds to build back? We need more support for the sector,” she said.

“There are over 2,400 early childhood institutions covering approximately 120,000 children, with some 11,000 practitioners. We have to start seeing our basic schools as partners and treat them as such,” she added.

Kinkead-Clarke, who is also the manager of the Dudley Grant Resource Centre, maintained that early childhood education lays the foundation for the skills needed for children to thrive.

“They are foundational, because they set the benchmark, the standard on which we are going to build out, and these skills are crucial to Vision 2030, a plan to make Jamaica the place to live, raise families, and do business,” she said.

The colloquium was hosted by Jamaica National (JN) Foundation in collaboration with the The UWI School of Education under the theme ‘Building Strong Foundations: Advancing Early Childhood Education through Policy, Practice and Partnership’. It sought to develop actionable tactics and strategies aimed at correcting the deficiencies affecting Jamaica’s early childhood education sector.

— Billeane Williams