An Open Letter to Matthew Farley And Other School Principals

Dear Brother Farley

Your column in the Sunday Sun newspaper entitled "Lessons For The PEP" caused our ‘Peoples Empowerment Party’ some concern, because you sought to portray our party as being hostile to the Principals of the secondary schools of Barbados.
Furthermore, you were so intent on publicly talking down to us and teaching us "a lesson" that you were guilty of obfuscating the simple and concrete proposal that we have put forward for reforming and improving the Barbados educational system.
Our proposal was made against the background of an educational system marred by a growing incidence of indiscipline and homosexuality, and characterised by pedagogical deficiencies that are reflected in the fact that some 50 per cent of our students leave secondary school without a single certificate to their name.
We have therefore called for an emergency rescue plan centred around the role of the school principal as the key leader responsible for ensuring the success of his or her school.
Conscious of the fact that we are in recessionary times and that resources are relatively scarce, we proposed that the rescue plan be implemented on an incremental basis, with no more than two secondary schools being tackled each year. At this pace, the entire public secondary school system would be over-hauled in one decade, with the more obviously failing schools being dealt with first.
We have encouraged the Ministry of Education to begin immediately by identifying the two worst performing secondary schools, based on criteria relating to academic success, student discipline and moral standards. (Of course, in measuring academic success one would have to factor in the academic proficiency of the students each school receives in the first form.)
The Principals of these two schools would then be invited to move with haste to draft a practical and comprehensive rescue plan for their schools, and to provide the Ministry of Education with a list of all the inputs and resources that they will need in order to commence the implementation of the rescue plans at the start of the new school year in September 2010.
We envisaged that these Principals would decide that they needed to reduce the size of their classes, and to increase the number of teachers on staff, so that students could receive more individual attention. We also envisaged the Principals requesting specialist remedial education teachers, additional guidance counsellors, and perhaps even the attachment of social workers and child psychologists to the schools.
The provision of these types of resources for two secondary schools is not beyond the capacity of the Barbados government even in this recessionary period!
In fact there are several ways in which these resources can be provided at minimal cost. For example, in order to accommodate smaller class sizes, new class rooms could be built during the long summer vacation, utilising relatively cheap pre-fabricated material or simple ply-wood. In addition, retired teachers can be placed on part time contracts and deployed in the targeted schools.
The Ministry of Education would therefore give the two school Principals all that they ask for, but would also inform them that they will be held accountable for the production of positive results, after a three year period.
If, after three years of the most complete cooperation and assistance on the part of the Ministry, a Principal is still not able to arrest the rot in his or her school, then that Principal should be relieved of his or her duty, and some-one else given the opportunity to accomplish the mission.
This proposal, dear Brother Farley, is not a "broadside" against or an attack on Principals! In fact, the PEP is fully cognisant of the very difficult task that our school administrators have on their hands, and that is why we are constantly searching for ways in which we can assist in the education and development of the young people of Barbados.