Chief government spokesman Dr. Roger Luncheon yesterday announced that the Cabinet will be monitoring the administration of schools through the eyes of the School Inspectorate, given the Education Ministry’s less than sterling job on that front.
Addressing the media at his weekly post-Cabinet news briefing, Dr. Luncheon said Cabinet opted to have the Inspectorate continue to report directly to it with the focus this year to be “exclusively on school administration … with particular attention to accountability of school heads.” The inspectorate had been reporting to the Cabinet for about a year now.
“The reports have not been inspiring; I think by far and large they do reflect the need for the Ministry of Education and the Regional Education Departments to exercise much greater command and control of performances at the level of school administration,” Dr. Luncheon stated.
He added that this year they will have the Inspectorate do “unplanned and random inspections” with the results to go to the ministry, the Teaching Service Commission and hopefully “contribute to enhancing accountability at the level of the schools.”
Dr. Luncheon noted that some of the shortcomings have already been ventilated in the media and include teachers’ attendance and their inability to utilise the resources available to get acceptable results. The inadequacy of resources and the failure of educational committees to inspect and keep a reasonable level of supervision of the schools under their care also compounded the problems, Dr. Luncheon added.
The school inspectorate is a properly constituted arm of the ministry, he also noted, while adding that it had been functioning since the establishment of the regional educational departments and had originally reported to the ministry. “In the context of the more aggressive approach to oversight and the demands for accountability that came from Cabinet, this was probably the first sector where work and reports from the sectors were specifically directed to Cabinet,” he explained, while reminding that a similar monitoring arrangement was now in place for the health sector.
