UNSENSIBLE!
That is how Minster of Education Ronald Jones has labelled the recent comments made by mother of the student caught in the middle of the Springer Memorial Secondary School disciplinary dispute.
Earlier today, Jones confirmed that the ministry of education had offered the parent a transfer to the Daryll Jordan Secondary School, but in today’s edition of the DAILY NATION, the mother was quoted as saying she turned down a move to the former St Lucy Secondary School as a “step down”.
“It was unfortunate again reading what is attributed to be the comments of the lady where the Daryll Jordan Secondary School is concerned. It’s because they don’t know the system and they don’t understand the system that they make comments such as this,” Jones said after the launch of an agricultural project at Ellerton Primary.
The minster explained that the ministry had made these offers to the mother after weeks of the child not attending school due to the ongoing saga, but he lamented the fact that she had turned down the possibility of a transfer after receiving legal advice from her attorney yesterday.
“I don’t know the parent. I have not met the parent, but if I had to offer advice, ‘If part of your initial advice is that the child was not being educated because of the two weeks or whatever, your first option is to get that child into a classroom where productive learning should be taking place; not these back and forth, going to the media’,” Jones added.
He further explained that he had done research on the performance of all the island’s secondary schools over the last 22 years, and despite having low raw score common entrance intake, the results of Daryll Jordan in the CSEC [Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate] exams had been nothing short of remarkable.
“You can be educated in any school in Barbados if you want to be educated. But the child should not be seen as a pawn in power struggles or the games that you see sometimes being played out,” he said.
It is for this reason he was highly critical of these comments over the Daryll Jordan Secondary School and added that: “It is when you make these unsensible comments, these comments that really don’t understand or appreciate the dynamics of learning that you would get this kind of foolishness.” (AD)
