Henry-Wilson

The Ministry of Education and Youth is to place psychologists in special-education centres in its six regions, in an effort to identify behavioural and learning disorders in children, according to Maxine Henry-Wilson, Minister of Education and Youth.

This is in addition to 120 special educators who are to be placed in educational institutions.

"We do not have enough psychologists or trained special educators so what we plan to do is start first by looking at them in a regional way," Mrs. Henry-Wilson told The Gleaner yesterday, following the Mico University College Care Centre (MICOCARE), second biennial conference on education and behaviour management.

The Education Minister said the guidance and counselling unit in the Ministry of Education has begun the process of identifying behavioural and learning disorders, "but it has to be beefed up considerably".

Mrs. Henry-Wilson also announced that her ministry was working on a home/school agreement.

"This means that we are codifying what we expect of schools and parents," Mrs. Henry-Wilson said, explaining that at the beginning of the school year, the parents will be required, together with the students, to sign on to the home-school agreement.

Code of conduct

Mrs. Henry-Wilson told the two-day conference, which is being held under the theme, 'Education and Behaviour Management: Keys to Reducing Violence in Our Schools and Communities', that the home/school agreement will come out of a national code of conduct that is being developed for all schools.

The Education Minister called for a robust debate on violence in schools. "We need to have a kind of common agreement as to what it is we expect in schools," she told the gathering of educators at the Jamaica Conference Centre, downtown Kingston.

In his remarks, Dr. Peter Phillips, Minister of National Security, said if the the Government is to deal with the problems in schools, wider environmental issues would have to be addressed.