The Hon. Petter Saint Jean, Minister for Education and Human Resource Development in the Dominica Government has called on the nation and teachers in particular to foster a deeper appreciation and love for education.
The Hon. Minister believes that teacher development has remained a focus of the Dominica Labour Party Administration. However, the he opines that there is need for a “paradigm shift” in the attitude of educators before Dominica can fully achieve high quality education.
“Under the DEEP (Dominica Education Enhancement Project) we were able to train a number of our teachers in various fields. Some of these teachers have returned on island and are now functioning within the various schools. So overall we’ve had a very [high success rate].
I believe one of the areas that we still have to focus on is [a change in the attitude] of our people,” he said.
Not only is Hon Saint Jean pledging to bring a change in the attitude of educators but the Minister says he is also looking to improve the delivery of education at the administrative level.
“Our Human Resource Department is now under review. We are also doing a review of the entire Ministry of Education; in fact we have set up a body that is mandated with doing a review of the Ministry of Education so that there will be structural changes, there will be changes within the whole management of the Ministry of Education geared towards ensuring the delivery of quality and relevant education to the people of Dominica.”
Meantime, the Hon Minister noted that during his previous term in office, Dominica has realized a major transformation in the delivery of education through the implementation of Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) programme.
Hon. Saint Jean highlighted Government’s plans to expand this programme.
“In this new term,” he said, “we are looking forward to introducing TVET at all of our secondary schools, whether government-owned or government-assisted and the Dominica State College. In fact the DSC will be the key in the whole process of delivery of TVET to the Dominican public.”
