The Ministry of Education intends to take to Cabinet very soon a White Paper that will guide the Ministry’s policies for the next five years.
This was revealed by the ministry’s Chief Education Officer Harrilal Seecharan and director, education planning Lisa Henry David, as they spoke on Monday on the Morning Brew about the Ministry’s draft education policy.
The new policy would be open to three public consultations to gauge the public's feedback in helping to determine what direction the education system should take as they move towards sustainable national development.
Seecharan said coming out of consultations held in 2016, one suggestion was that the Concordat should be reviewed.
He said the Ministry held discussions with denominational boards in terms of health, family life and education (HFLE) which also deals with sex education.
“And I think there is space within that landscape... within the HFLE there is sexuality and sexual health education and that is the perspective from which the Ministry is dealing with it. So there is a national curriculum for HFLE…denominational schools have flexibility in terms of adjusting within the perspective.”
The next series of consultation, David said will be to ratify the findings of the 2016 consultations and to finalise the draft policy for the period 2017 to 2022.
She said the ultimate goal is to improve the education system in terms of quality, relevance and output from the labour force.
Although the Ministry does not have a draft policy in place, David said they have been working with a series of documents.
The last education policy, David said, was from 1993 to 2003.
Coming out of the last consultations, Seecharan said were management and administration of the education system, including a number of legislative changes and review of the Education Act.
He said this new consultation will be held on October 16 at the University of T&T, Valsayn campus and at Naparima College, San Fernando, on October 23 to the public. A third will be held in Tobago at a date to be announced.
Seecharan said things the Ministry may have missed previously will be included in this new policy.
Once the consultations are completed, Seecharan said the Ministry will move to ratify a new policy.
“So it will move from a Green Paper to a White Paper. We intend to finalise this shortly and take it back to Cabinet when it becomes a White Paper which will guide the education system for the next five years,” he said.