Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly $9 mil­lion is be­ing spent on the Va­ca­tion Re­vi­sion Pro­gramme (VRP)this year, which has seen an in­crease in par­tic­i­pa­tion by stu­dents.

Speak­ing with re­porters at Huawei’s and the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry’s Cli­mate Change ICT Clus­ter Com­pe­ti­tion and Ex­hi­bi­tion at the Diego Mar­tin South Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said VRP was tak­ing place at 80 pri­ma­ry schools and 26 sec­ondary schools around the coun­try.

The min­is­ter said more than half of the sec­ondary school stu­dent pop­u­la­tion was at­tend­ing the pro­gramme.

“The turnout we are see­ing about 60-some­thing per cent ... the stu­dents are com­ing out,” Gadb­sy-Dol­ly said.

The pro­gramme was launched in 2022 and tar­get­ed stu­dents who scored un­der 30 per cent and low­er in the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment ex­am­i­na­tion. That year saw SEA scores plum­met. The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter had at­trib­uted the de­crease to learn­ing loss as­so­ci­at­ed with the lack of face-to-face class­es dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

How­ev­er, de­spite the launch of the re­me­di­al class­es that year on­ly 33 per cent of stu­dents at­tend­ed and the fol­low­ing year, 3,000 pri­ma­ry school stu­dents en­rolled.

The next year the pro­gramme was ex­pand­ed to cater to pupils in Stan­dards 3 and 4, along with those who scored less than 50 per cent in SEA that aca­d­e­m­ic year.

Ac­cord­ing to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry of­fi­cials, SEA marks im­proved in 2023 and con­tin­ued for this year’s ex­am.

“And those that val­ue what we are of­fer­ing, the op­por­tu­ni­ty, those par­ents are mak­ing the ef­fort to send their chil­dren out and we are grate­ful for that,” said the min­is­ter.

This year’s pro­gramme be­gan on Ju­ly 15 and will run for five weeks un­til Au­gust 16. The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter said em­pha­sis was be­ing placed on teach­ing stu­dents in small class sizes in sub­jects such as Math­e­mat­ics, Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts, and co-cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties.