Deputy Chief Education Officer of the Ministry of Education, Science, Technology and Innovation, Dr. Roderick Rudder, speaking about the implementation of the School Teacher Effectiveness Plans (STEP) in Project Schools on Monday.
Through funding from the Caribbean Development Bank and Government, primary schools will receive a systemic change which focuses on students’ learning with the implementation of the School Teacher Effectiveness Plans, or STEP.
Chief Education Officer in the Ministry of Education, Karen Best, highlighted the origins of the initiative during the launch of the programme at the Erdiston Teachers’ Training College’s (ETTC) auditorium on Monday. During her welcome remarks, Best said that some years ago, the Ministry of Education identified certain necessary elements of the school system. She explained that there was a need for enhancing the support of pedagogy.
In collaboration with the University of New Brunswick (UNB), the multi-million-dollar pilot project was rolled out in eight primary schools across Barbados. The Chief Education Officer noted that the initiative has already realised several benefits, which include ability to enhance teacher education and professional programmes, and the development of STEP framework. This is in addition to the development of monitoring and evaluation framework to guide the measurement of individual students and overall performance. She added that the implementation of the quality enhancement initiatives have also resulted in great collaboration among teachers, principals, the faculties of education and various departments and units at the Ministry of Education.
Also elaborating on the characteristics of STEP, Deputy Chief Education Officer Dr. Roderick Rudder outlined the three components of the project. According to Dr. Rudder, the first one focuses on enhancing the physical learning environment.
“Unless the classroom environment is conducive to learning, there will be significant challenges in getting our students to stay focused and for teachers to feel comfortable while delivering pedagogy,” said Dr. Rudder.
Secondly, he explained that it was important to build capacity not only among classroom practitioners, but with those who are trained teachers or provide teacher education, citing the role of the Erdiston Teachers’ Training College. Additionally, he said that there was a need to identify more scientific methods of delivering educational planning across the sector. By doing so, Dr. Rudder pointed out this facilitated more effective management of resources.
Enhanced learning environment
As part of the vision of the enhanced learning environment, Dr. Rudder spoke about some of the initial plans which focus on reconstruction of six primary schools, rehabilitation or upgrade at two primary schools along with civil works at selected primary schools and the construction of a new secondary school. He noted that although it would not be the main focus at the launch, it continues to be at the centre as classroom environments are modernised to facilitate the learning process.
According to Dr. Rudder with the STEP programme, after the consultancies are completed, ETTC will be charged with leading the roll out of capacity building across the Education sector. He said it became necessary to invest heavily where faculty members of ETTC are given the skills, tools and development competencies to deliver the teachers’ effectiveness. With the assistance of the UNB, Dr. Rudder revealed that each pilot primary school created their own plans for capacity building for teachers’ effective throughout the pilot period.
Speaking to The Barbados Advocate after the launch, Dr. Rudder further explained that the eight pilot schools were in possession of their STEP frameworks. He added that plans of training from ETTC for the other 61 primary schools will start next week.