RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath has raised con­cerns about the grow­ing pres­sures fac­ing stu­dents, say­ing this has prompt­ed the min­istry to move ahead with a re­vamp of its Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion (SSSD) to pro­vide greater as­sis­tance.

Speak­ing to re­porters yes­ter­day fol­low­ing the launch of a spo­ken word po­et­ry com­pe­ti­tion at the Pointe-a-Pierre Staff Club, Dr Dowlath said the re­struc­tur­ing aims to strength­en sup­port for vul­ner­a­ble stu­dents, in­clud­ing those with learn­ing chal­lenges, autism and AD­HD, through a more co­or­di­nat­ed sys­tem of stu­dent aides, guid­ance coun­sel­lors and so­cial work­ers.

Asked whether he was con­cerned about stu­dent de­pres­sion and the re­cent sui­cide of a 15-year-old girl, Dr Dowlath replied, “Yes, which is why we are re­struc­tur­ing the SSSD to en­sure we can pro­vide more sup­port for vul­ner­a­ble stu­dents. It’s a work in progress.”

He not­ed that the ini­tia­tive will al­so in­volve equip­ping staff with the skills need­ed to re­spond to men­tal health con­cerns. The min­istry re­cent­ly host­ed a sem­i­nar for so­cial work­ers fo­cus­ing on the pres­sures that can lead stu­dents to con­tem­plate sui­cide and oth­er harm­ful be­hav­iours.

In tan­dem with these changes, the min­istry is seek­ing to deep­en parental in­volve­ment in ed­u­ca­tion through new pro­grammes and dig­i­tal tools.

“We are in the process of de­vel­op­ing a par­ent pro­gramme and a par­ent por­tal where par­ents will be able to ac­cess all the in­for­ma­tion they need to sup­port their chil­dren,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Dowlath, the min­istry’s ap­proach is cen­tred on tree pil­lars — the child, the par­ent and the school sys­tem — with the goal of cre­at­ing a more sup­port­ive en­vi­ron­ment both in­side and out­side the class­room.

He added that broad­er cur­ricu­lum re­forms are al­so be­ing ex­plored to ease aca­d­e­m­ic stress, in­clud­ing a re­view of the pri­ma­ry school cur­ricu­lum and the in­tro­duc­tion of con­tin­u­ous as­sess­ment to re­duce re­liance on the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tion.

The roll­out of AI-sup­port­ed learn­ing ma­te­ri­als and the con­tin­u­a­tion of the Form One lap­top ini­tia­tive are al­so ex­pect­ed to help stan­dard­ise ac­cess to re­sources while giv­ing stu­dents greater flex­i­bil­i­ty.

Re­spond­ing to con­cerns that dig­i­tal text­books could af­fect the liveli­hoods of book­sellers and pub­lish­ers, Dr Dowlath said the pri­or­i­ty is en­sur­ing equal ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion­al re­sources.

“All of these re­sources are in­tend­ed to al­low our stu­dents to com­plete their aca­d­e­m­ic work and find more time to en­gage in team­work, play and holis­tic de­vel­op­ment,” he said.

The spo­ken word and po­et­ry com­pe­ti­tion—held in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, the Na­tion­al Li­brary and In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem Au­thor­i­ty (NALIS), and the San Fer­nan­do West con­stituen­cy — is al­so part of that de­vel­op­men­tal ap­proach.

The com­pe­ti­tion, which runs from April to June, is de­signed to pro­vide stu­dents with a cre­ative out­let, par­tic­u­lar­ly as many young peo­ple spend in­creas­ing amounts of time iso­lat­ed or on so­cial me­dia.

“We want to em­pow­er them to bring their ideas for­ward,” he said, adding that the ini­tia­tive al­so un­der­scores the im­por­tance of pos­i­tive male role mod­els with­in a large­ly fe­male-dom­i­nat­ed school sys­tem.

Dr Dowlath said pro­vid­ing av­enues for cre­ative ex­pres­sion is one way to help stu­dents man­age stress while build­ing con­fi­dence and iden­ti­ty, as the min­istry works to ad­dress both their aca­d­e­m­ic and emo­tion­al needs.