Despite early opposition from the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) regarding the Government’s plan to mandate summer school this year, Education Minister Fayval Williams says the ministry remains resolute in its decision.

After a month of back and forth between the JTA and the education ministry it appears that a final decision on the matter of mandatory summer school has been made.

Speaking during a Post-Cabinet press briefing held on Wednesday (June 23) Williams indicated that, “the ministry would have laid out a plan for summer school and for the national homework and after school programme for the upcoming school year.”

She said: “We would have spent the last week doing our consultations and meetings with the various stakeholders… Among those groups with which we spoke last week would be the leadership of the Jamaica Teacher’s Association and I believe after going through and allowing question and answers and doing the presentation…the JTA walked away with a better understanding of what it is that we’re planning to do to help to reduce the learning gap that our students have…”

The minister stated that the summer school aims “to help to put them (students) on a path, to help them to make up for what it is that they did not learn during this past year and to help to accelerate them along the path in terms of their educational pursuit.”

She expressed that once discussions regarding summer school had been finalised, the ministry would be “coming to the larger Jamaican audience to allow them to understand what the plans (for summer school) are…”.

Highlighting the importance of the ministry’s summer school venture, she explained that “since March of last year we’ve been living through a pandemic (and) our students have not been able to be in the face-to-face mode…”.

Although the ministry has done its best to engage students using various platforms, Williams stated, “We know that there is a large segment of the students who were not engaged at all or were barely engaged and we have to find those students, beginning this summer…”.

She argued that it was the ministry’s intention to go into the communities and find these students so that they could be engaged and brought back into the “mindset of school and learning”.

She noted, “I believe that we would be irresponsible if we did not have a plan for summer and for the upcoming school year in terms of providing our children with additional hours so that they could have the concepts they learned in class reinforced…”.