Chief Education Officer Dr Ramona Archer-Bradshaw has attempted to allay the fears of those who think the junior college of excellence as proposed in the Education Transformation is a carbon copy of the controversial middle schools as practised in Bermuda and United States of America.
During the Education Transformation Public Consultation Meeting at Harrison College on Wednesday a lot of the discussion surrounded the junior and senior colleges of excellence with many contributors expressing scepticism and preferring to have the emphasis on pre-primary and primary education.
Union consultant The Most Honourable Patrick D. Frost, in his contribution said in relation to the junior college “you are putting pupils at a particular age when they are most dangerous to themselves; you are putting them in the hands of teachers who would have to deal with discipline and other problems . . . that’s a recipe for disaster. . .”.
But Archer-Bradshaw cautioned about equating the two.
“What we are proposing is something that is tailor made to our 11 to 14-year-olds; a kind of programme that has a heavy emphasis on teaching those children values and skills so that at the end the third form level these children would have had a level of exposure that fortifies them to be able to make a decision with regard to areas of specialisations,” she said. (JS)