Kali­fa Clyne

A pi­lot project to ef­fec­tive­ly di­ag­nose chil­dren with dis­abil­i­ties and spe­cial needs will be launched in 12 pri­ma­ry schools and 12 Ear­ly Child­hood Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tres soon says Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Tim Gopeesingh. He said that while de­liv­er­ing clos­ing re­marks on Tues­day at the Sec­ondary Schools Prin­ci­pal Work­shop at Crowne Plaza, Port-of-Spain. He said from re­search done at his min­istry it was be­lieved that about 30 per cent of stu­dents in the school sys­tem have spe­cial needs which were not be­ing ad­dressed. He list­ed these spe­cial needs as At­ten­tion Deficit Syn­drome (ADD), emo­tion­al, be­hav­iour­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal ab­nor­mal­i­ties, hear­ing and vi­su­al de­fects and cere­bral pal­sy.

He said: "The project would help us de­tect these chil­dren from the ages of three, four and five. "Once we de­tect, through the project, the in­ci­dences, we will then de­ter­mine how many cen­tres will be set up in dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try," he added. Gopeesingh re­vealed that his min­istry in­tend­ed to go to the pri­vate sec­tor to help in terms of man­age­ment and treat­ment of stu­dents with spe­cial needs. "Whether they need to see clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gists, be­hav­iour­al psy­chol­o­gists, au­di­ol­o­gists, op­tometrists, we will work with the dif­fer­ent as­so­ci­a­tions to move for­ward to as­sist these stu­dents," Gopeesingh said. He said the work­shop, which saw par­tic­i­pa­tion of 152 prin­ci­pals, re­sult­ed in sev­er­al rec­om­men­da­tions be­ing put for­ward to deal with chal­lenges and is­sues fac­ing schools.