Foster-Allen

Come September, inspection will begin in the island's more than 1,000 public primary and secondary schools, in an effort to improve their performance.

Elaine Foster-Allen, chief inspector at the National Education Inspectorate (NEI), said 300 schools would be inspected in the first year. The plan, she said, was to have all schools inspected over a three-year period.

The NEI was established last September. It is an independent body mandated by the task force report on education to inspect, assess and review the quality of schools and the education system.

Self evaluation

Foster-Allen said schools would be asked to do their own self evaluation.

"Then we will go in and do our inspections. Depending on the size of the school, the inspection might last a whole week," said the chief inspector.

She noted that, when the inspections are done, reports would be submitted to the schools, Parlia-ment and board chairmen.

Foster-Allen said the NEI would also inspect teacher-training institutions and private facilities.

"We have over a thousand schools so we will get the baseline of a thousand schools done. It will probably take us three years to complete that. Once we have done the baseline work, it may be that we don't need to see that school again until another three or four years," Foster Allen said.

She added: "However, if your school happens to be a school with challenges, we might very well have to go back to the school in a year's time to see how you are performing."

Without fear, favour

Foster-Allen said the NEI would report good, insufficient and inadequate practices, without fear or favour.

"But we are not going to witch-hunt anybody," said Foster-Allen.

She continued: "We are not there to put people down. We are there to engage teachers and principals in conversation about how to improve the system and how to improve the outcomes of children."

Foster-Allen said the Regional Education Authorities will ensure that schools develop improvement plans.

"Schools that seem to be failing children, we just have to deal with them. We are not saying we are going to close schools. Closing schools is not the way to go, improving schools is an imperative," she told The Gleaner.

She noted that the quality insurance team would monitor the quality of the inspection procedure and all inspectors would be trained certified and registered.

Foster-Allen said inspections in school would be different from what existed in the past, in that there will be a set of dedicated people conducting the inspections.

"The old education officers were pulled here and there to do all sort of things and could never really work on school inspections. The way in which we do inspections will be different," she said, adding that emphasis would be placed on what children are learning.

"I know that we can improve our schools. I am passionate that we must improve our schools, we must improve the outcomes for our children," said the chief inspector, adding that inspections alone cannot solve all the problems in the education system.

petrina.francis@gleanerjm.com