Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly yes­ter­day de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to make it manda­to­ry for un­ruly stu­dents, who have been ex­pelled from the school sys­tem, to be en­rolled in the Mil­i­tary-Led Aca­d­e­m­ic Train­ing Pro­gramme (Mi­LAT).

She said it is through this pro­gramme that the Gov­ern­ment will be giv­ing the stu­dents every op­por­tu­ni­ty to trans­form their lives to be­come pro­duc­tive cit­i­zens.

Gads­by-Dol­ly in­di­cat­ed this yes­ter­day in the Sen­ate, as she replied to Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark’s query about when the manda­to­ry pol­i­cy would start.

She said the Cab­i­net has al­ready agreed that stu­dents un­der the age of 16—which is the cut-off age for manda­to­ry at­ten­dance in school—be en­rolled in Mi­LAT. “There­fore, this pol­i­cy is be­ing im­ple­ment­ed cur­rent­ly.”

Gads­by-Dol­ly said con­sul­ta­tion on the School Dis­ci­pline Ma­trix (SDM) was done along with the TTPS, Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty, Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice and oth­er stake­hold­ers and forms part of the pol­i­cy. Con­sul­ta­tions re­sult­ed in the amend­ment of the SDM and it was ap­proved by Cab­i­net.

Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Hazel Thomp­son-Ahye about the le­gal au­thor­i­ty un­der which chil­dren ex­pelled from schools will tran­si­tion in­to Mi­LAT, Gads­by-Dol­ly said, “By law, stu­dents un­der the age of 16 are re­quired to be en­rolled in an ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tion. How­ev­er, the Ed­u­ca­tion Act pro­vides for ex­pul­sion of stu­dents by the Min­is­ter un­der cer­tain cir­cum­stances.

“Mi­LAT is a spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tion and can, there­fore, ac­com­mo­date the ed­u­ca­tion­al con­ti­nu­ity of stu­dents out­side of the main­stream school sys­tem. This is the le­gal frame­work un­der­pin­ning the com­pul­so­ry en­roll­ment of stu­dents un­der the age of 16 in­to Mi­LAT.”

The Min­is­ter added, “While these stu­dents may have be­hav­iour­al chal­lenges, and may not be able to strive in the school en­vi­ron­ment, as far as pos­si­ble, the Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to giv­ing them every op­por­tu­ni­ty for trans­for­ma­tion so that they can be­come pro­duc­tive cit­i­zens.

“For those stu­dents over the age of 16, while they are not re­quired to com­pul­so­ri­ly reg­is­ter, the min­istry will con­tin­ue to rec­om­mend their reg­is­tra­tion at Mi­LAT, and as­sist in any way pos­si­ble to al­low them to con­tin­ue their ed­u­ca­tion in that trans­for­ma­tive en­vi­ron­ment.”

On re­ports about the late pay­ment of salaries to UWI Glob­al Cam­pus staff, Gads­by-Dol­ly said the work­ers were not paid di­rect­ly by the Gov­ern­ment.

She said the Glob­al Cam­pus was built on a rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing mod­el, and man­age­ment is pur­su­ing mea­sures to en­sure they are able to meet their ex­pens­es in a sus­tain­able man­ner. A con­sul­tant was hired to lead ac­tiv­i­ty in this re­gard and mea­sures are cur­rent­ly be­ing for­mu­lat­ed.

Gads­by-Dol­ly de­nied the 14 per cent re­duc­tion in UWI sub­ven­tion had led to the chal­lenges at the cam­pus.