Ministry of Education & Youth

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Early childhood education officers will spearhead the training of early childhood practitioners as well as facilitate the dissemination of information about the new regulations and standards that will govern the sector.

Assistant Chief Education Officer for the Early Childhood Unit in the Ministry of Education and Youth, Evadne Vennor, made the announcement as she addressed the first in a series of workshops with early childhood officers on the new regulations and standards, on June 22 at the Sunset Jamaica Grande Resort in Ocho Rios.

The workshops are a precursor to a public education campaign to be undertaken by the Enhancement of Basic Schools Project (EBSP) in collaboration with the Early Childhood Commission (ECC) from July to December this year.

The campaign, Mrs. Vennor noted, would be generally geared towards creating public awareness about the new regulations and standards that will govern the sector and in particular, educate the operators of early childhood institutions and their boards, teachers and parents, about these standards.

She told JIS News that the consultation with the early childhood officers was to garner their input on how the training process would be facilitated and disseminated to the relevant stakeholders. "The education officers will be playing a pivotal role in informing the practitioners and their management committees and other stakeholders on the regulations and standards.[they] will have to spearhead this process," she stated.

In explaining how the process would be carried out, Mrs. Vennor said that all early childhood education officers would be trained on information delivery, that is, how they should disseminate the information to the relevant stakeholders. This, she said, would be achieved in a one-day training workshop, which will be held in July.

The education officers in turn, will train early childhood education practitioners, who would assist in relaying the information about the new regulations and standards to other stakeholders at the community level.

In the meanwhile, Mrs. Vennor said the Early Childhood Unit welcomed the new regulations as they would only serve to standardize the level at which institutions operate. "We welcome the new standards," she said, "as they will enhance early childhood institutions and the quality of their service delivery.and we are expecting that they will promote the optimum development of our children from birth to eight years old."

Beverley Parkinson, Early Childhood Education Officer for Region 4, which comprises the parishes of St. James, Hanover and Westmoreland, also concurred that the new regulations would raise the standard of early childhood institutions.

"I know implementation of the standards will have some teething pains and people may not be very welcoming to the ideas, but we know that this is really going to improve the conditions for both our children and teachers," she stated.

A total of 10 standards have been formulated out of the regulations of the Early Childhood Act of 2005. The ECC, which supervises and regulates the operations of early childhood institutions, will be responsible for implementing the regulations of the Act as soon as it is gazetted.

Executive Director of the ECC, Merris Murray, informed that prior to implementation, the relevant stakeholders would be informed via the public education programme about the legal and regulatory framework that would govern the operations of all early childhood institutions in Jamaica.

The early childhood sector is being revamped as part of the education transformation process.

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