Education ministry to host PEP workshops for parents and teachers

WESTERN BUREAU:

Dr Grace McLean, chief education officer in the ministry of education, said primary school teachers and parents, who have not fully grasped the method of teaching the contents of the Primary Exit Profile (PEP), will be further engaged in several sensitisation sessions this month.

In March this year, the government abandoned the 19-year-old Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT), replacing it with PEP, which is designed to develop students into critical thinkers and innovators for the country's workforce.

"Come September 12, we will be kicking off our teachers' sensitisation session with our minister (Ruel Reid). We will take that right through to the end of September," McLean told parents and teachers at a sensitisation session at the York Castle High School in Brown's Town, St Ann last week.

"We will actually be meeting with teachers, from all different types of schools, so they can interact with the minister and the team to get further information and clarification [on PEP]."

WEEKEND TRAINING

She continued, "In addition, come the end of September into October, we will be organising PEP camps, which are going to be held on weekends, because we are cognisant of the fact that parents do work and we don't want you to take too much time off from work. We will be having these camps in selected area right across the country.

"These camps are going to be a little different. The setting will be one where you come with your papers, pens, pencils and computers. We will have small groups going over performance task questions, curriculum-based type questions, abilities type questions and the objectives from the curriculum."

McLean said, "We will show you how it is linked, we will give you an opportunity as parents and as teachers to create your own questions, go through brainstorming questions to understand the approach that you are to use to guide your children at home, as well as for our teachers to guide our students at school. It will not stop there. Once we have the performance task mock assessment result ready, which will be by the second week in September, we will be having coaching sessions with our teachers."

McLean also promised that this week the education ministry will be having the full deployment of literacy and numeracy specialists, as well as technical education officers, who will be at the schools that are in need of the support most to ensure that the PEP implementation gets off to a good start.