Based on the feed­back, Har­ri­lal Seecha­ran, act­ing chief ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer (Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion), said ed­u­ca­tors wel­come and ap­plaud the ini­tia­tive to re­vamp the cur­ricu­lum. Teach­ers in the writ­ing team were ex­cit­ed by the change and see it as an enor­mous op­por­tu­ni­ty to make a con­tri­bu­tion to ed­u­ca­tion and the de­vel­op­ment of our na­tion.

Stake­hold­ers (in­clud­ing all schools, boards, de­nom­i­na­tion­al groups, in­ter­est groups, PTA) wel­comed the ini­tia­tive when shared at the stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tions. They will be fur­ther asked to share their views on the new cur­ricu­lum be­fore it is fi­nalised.

When con­tact­ed, De­vanand Sinanan, for­mer first vice pres­i­dent Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (T&TU­TA) and 2009 Teacher of the Year (now prin­ci­pal of Pa­lo Seco Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary), said he was aware MSVB was ap­proached but "he got buried in the salary ne­go­ti­a­tions and was not aware if they had com­plet­ed the ex­er­cise."

"I know a cou­ple months ago, they were re­view­ing the cur­ricu­lum. I know MSVB is not al­to­geth­er new to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and they were con­tract­ed to train peo­ple for tech ed­u­ca­tion. I don't know what role the min­istry would have de­cid­ed. I don't know if they had com­plet­ed the ex­er­cise. I would not want to ven­ture a com­ment."He did not com­plete­ly rule out for­eign in­volve­ment.

"It de­pends on what as­pects of the cur­ricu­lum is be­ing re­viewed. If there is a lo­cal in­put, we would be more fa­mil­iar with the terms and out­comes of what is com­ing through the pri­ma­ry school sys­tem."He said the cur­ricu­lum needs would be aligned to cre­at­ing an ide­al Cari­com cit­i­zen.

"It has to be aligned to cre­at­ing an ide­al Caribbean stu­dent. We want to cre­ate prob­lem solvers with healthy re­spect for them­selves and those around them. All of Cari­com is sup­posed to make the nec­es­sary ad­just­ments and to be aligned to it."But he said, "We shouldn't be blind to say there should not be any for­eign in­put. We can't ex­ist in iso­la­tion."

Sinanan said at the same time we should not rule out Sub­ran's views."I know Dr Sub­ran quite well. He taught me the MA pro­gramme. I know his heart is in the right place. He is com­mit­ted to ad­vanc­ing the cause of ed­u­ca­tion. We need peo­ple like Dr Sub­ran to chal­lenge the sys­tem."

Char­ac­ter­is­tics of the­new pri­ma­ry cur­ricu­lum

�2 An in­te­grat­ed, the­mat­ic ap­proach to teach­ing and learn­ing in which learn­ing from dif­fer­ent sub­jects is skil­ful­ly meld­ed in­to whole mod­ules. There is a fo­cus on core con­tent, build­ing crit­i­cal skills and cul­ti­vat­ing de­sir­able dis­po­si­tions in stu­dents, rather than rote learn­ing of con­tent and re­gur­gi­ta­tion on pa­per and pen­cil tests. This makes for a smooth tran­si­tion in­to In­fants and makes for a plea­sur­able learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for the child, and more ef­fec­tive de­liv­ery and re­ten­tion of con­tent

�2 Lit­er­a­cy and nu­mer­a­cy built in­to all sub­ject ar­eas

�2 Con­tin­u­ous As­sess­ment to al­le­vi­ate the high stakes, one-shot SEA test to­geth­er with as­sess­ment for learn­ing which us­es a wide range of class­room as­sess­ments to feed­back and im­prove stu­dent per­for­mance

�2 Dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed in­struc­tion to en­able teach­ers to use a va­ri­ety of teach­ing meth­ods

�2 In­fu­sion and use of in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies in all ar­eas

�2 Fo­cused teach­ing of Vi­su­al and Per­form­ing Arts and Phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion to en­sure that all chil­dren's tal­ents and sen­si­bil­i­ties are de­vel­oped.

�2 A fo­cus on val­ues, char­ac­ter and cit­i­zen­ship to build a strong, tol­er­ant and con­sci­en­tious cit­i­zen­ry.