Ali­cia Llanos

A lack of space and fa­cil­i­ties are hin­der­ing many pri­ma­ry schools from qual­i­fy­ing for the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion's Pan in the Class­room pro­gramme and oth­er arts ini­tia­tives pro­posed in the min­istry's re­vised pri­ma­ry school cur­ricu­lum. The an­nounce­ment was made yes­ter­day by Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh dur­ing his fea­ture ad­dress at the launch of the Na­tion­al Ju­nior Panora­ma at Diego Mar­tin Boys' RC School, Church Street, Diego Mar­tin. The school's steel­band kicked off the com­pe­ti­tion with their se­lec­tion of Ben­jai's Tri­ni.

Gopeesingh said many schools did not have the ad­e­quate space or fa­cil­i­ties to house the pro­gramme, deny­ing stu­dents ex­po­sure to the mu­sic and arts ed­u­ca­tion. He said for schools to qual­i­fy for the pro­gramme they must have ad­e­quate stor­age and prac­tic­ing space to ac­com­mo­date the steel­pans giv­en to them. Gopeesingh said the min­istry was work­ing close­ly with the Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ty Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (EF­CL) to en­sure all schools, both pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary, had the nec­es­sary fa­cil­i­ties for the pro­gramme in the short­est time pos­si­ble. He said stu­dents who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pan pro­gramme were more fo­cused, se­ri­ous, dis­ci­plined and in­no­v­a­tive.