A government motion to endorse the report of the national education conference and to adopt it as the blueprint for reform of the education service was passed in the House yesterday.
Education Minister Alden McLaughlin said the report was not an implementation plan. It was a report of the conference and broad strategies.
A detailed implementation plan would be developed.
He said he had listened to what Opposition Members had said and that would be analysed and anything useful would be incorporated in the final report.
Mr. McLaughlin said he had no beef with any one individual in education.
All he asked for was cooperation, competence, truthfulness and an acceptance that what they had needed to be made better.
Mr. McLaughlin said he knew the system was failing.
The average student was less equipped for the workforce today than was the case when he left high school more than 20 years ago, he said.
Making his contribution to the debate on Wednesday afternoon, Opposition Leader McKeeva Bush said he would have preferred that the document be sent to the districts and the schools so that one and all could have input.
It was a feel good document and he wondered how much of the substance in it was new.
It was a rehash which offered some solutions which had been on the table for a little while, said Mr. Bush, who also described it as old wine in new bottles.
He felt the document did not acknowledge the good work that had been done and that by no stretch of the imagination was it a blueprint.
There were more questions than answers and reform in education would take more time, he told the House.
Also speaking on Wednesday afternoon, MLA Rolston Anglin said his theme was, ‘no child left behind and skills today, jobs tomorrow.’
It was frustrating for people to obtain skills and not be able to use them, he said.
They had to make sure that young people were getting into areas that the economy needed.
They had to make sure the curriculum was being geared toward the needs of the economy, said the West Bay Member.
He also said that one thing that was missing was a risk analysis because there was always a risk that the strategies would not work.
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