Leela Ramdeen

The new aca­d­e­m­ic year com­mences on Mon­day). Par­ents would have been prepar­ing their chil­dren by pur­chas­ing school uni­forms, books, shoes, class­room sup­plies and so on. Stu­dents will have mixed feel­ings eg en­thu­si­asm or anx­i­ety.

Some may be mov­ing to a new school. The men­tal health/emo­tion­al well-be­ing of each child is crit­i­cal if he/she is to ben­e­fit from at­tend­ing any ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tion. Par­ents/the com­mu­ni­ty can do much to help stu­dents put their best foot for­ward.

Re­cent­ly, I ran a ses­sion for some Catholic teach­ers in Lon­don. Some of them will be re­ceiv­ing a new in­take of stu­dents. In­ter alia, we ex­plored how they have been striv­ing to make a dif­fer­ence in the lives of stu­dents, what their teach­ing goals are for the year ahead, and what re­sources they would need to in­spire their stu­dents.

Teach­ing is a vo­ca­tion. Teach­ers stand as bea­cons of hope in our trou­bled so­ci­ety/world. Schools can make a dif­fer­ence in the lives of stu­dents and to so­ci­ety as a whole, and a sub­stan­tial por­tion of that dif­fer­ence is at­trib­ut­able to teach­ers and to the qual­i­ty of lead­er­ship in the school. To man­age di­ver­si­ty in the class­room, teach­ers are re­quired to have ap­pro­pri­ate knowl­edge/skills/abil­i­ty, high ex­pec­ta­tions of stu­dents and pos­i­tive at­ti­tudes to­wards them.

In our present cri­sis, teach­ers have a great re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to build com­mu­ni­ty/our na­tion. Hav­ing been a teacher my­self, I recog­nise the chal­lenge that teach­ers face in seek­ing to equip stu­dents with life-skills such as self/glob­al aware­ness, so­cial skills/re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, em­pa­thy, col­lab­o­ra­tion and re­la­tion­ship skills, per­se­ver­ance, cre­ativ­i­ty, crit­i­cal think­ing, prob­lem solv­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, in­no­va­tion skills, tech­nol­o­gy skills, and in­for­ma­tion/dig­i­tal/me­dia/civic lit­er­a­cy.

Much more can be done if they forge strong part­ner­ships with par­ents and the wider com­mu­ni­ty e.g. to pro­mote virtues and val­ues that will in­form stu­dents’ de­ci­sion-mak­ing in and out of the class­room. Char­ac­ter for­ma­tion is a cen­tral as­pect of the role of a teacher.

Over the past few years, so­cial me­dia have high­light­ed dis­turb­ing scenes of vi­o­lence among stu­dents; in and out of schools.

Teach­ing and learn­ing are ad­verse­ly im­pact­ed by such be­hav­iour. Re­search has shown that sev­er­al char­ac­ter strengths are as­so­ci­at­ed with both pos­i­tive class­room be­hav­iour and school achieve­ment (www.re­search­gate.net).

Schools must do more to nur­ture in stu­dents, val­ues such as car­ing, in­quis­i­tive­ness, and self-con­trol. Help them to recog­nise the dif­fer­ence be­tween right and wrong, to act re­spon­si­bly and to choose to do what is moral­ly right.

To meet the needs of our stu­dents in this ever-chang­ing glob­al com­mu­ni­ty, teach­ers must com­mit to on­go­ing pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment.

Teach­ers, how can you en­cour­age stu­dents to be in­de­pen­dent life­long learn­ers, if you your­self are not pre­pared to prac­tice what you preach? Ac­tion must be tak­en at the lev­el of ini­tial teacher train­ing and among teach­ers in the sys­tem to strength­en high­er learn­ing skills.

If we are to de­vel­op a knowl­edge-based, in­no­v­a­tive, com­pet­i­tive so­ci­ety, we must link this goal to our phi­los­o­phy about the kind of cit­i­zen we wish to nur­ture in our ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions/so­ci­ety. And if we val­ue our teach­ers and stu­dents, we would en­sure that the in­fra­struc­ture/plant in which they op­er­ate is con­ducive to teach­ing and learn­ing. Too many of our ex­ist­ing school build­ings are not fit for pur­pose. Main­te­nance and re­pairs are im­por­tant.

On Au­gust 15, in a News­day re­port en­ti­tled: “T&T CXC pass­es im­prove, high­er than re­gion­al av­er­age,” ref­er­ence was made to a state­ment made by Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath, who said, “Every child can suc­ceed when giv­en the right sup­port, op­por­tu­ni­ties, and be­lief in their po­ten­tial. The achieve­ments we cel­e­brate to­day demon­strate what is pos­si­ble when we nur­ture the tal­ents of all our stu­dents. We will build on this mo­men­tum as we work to­ward even greater ac­com­plish­ments in 2026...There has been gen­er­al in­cre­men­tal im­prove­ment in the 2025 CSEC and CAPE re­sults. How­ev­er, CSEC math­e­mat­ics con­tin­ues to be a ma­jor area of con­cern.”

It is im­por­tant for us to ad­dress the needs of eg the 2,082 stu­dents who scored 30 per cent or be­low in the SEA ex­ams, those who drop out of schools at all lev­els, and stu­dents with spe­cial needs. Note that while Min­is­ter Dowlath said there were im­prove­ments in Math­e­mat­ics and Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts, there was a de­crease in Eng­lish Lan­guage writ­ing.

I join him in con­grat­u­lat­ing stu­dents for their “hard work, re­silience, and achieve­ments in the 2025 ex­am­i­na­tions.” He said “these re­sults al­so re­flect the ded­i­ca­tion of teach­ers, par­ents, and school lead­ers, as well as the min­istry’s on­go­ing com­mit­ment to aca­d­e­m­ic ex­cel­lence.”