Petrina Francis, Staff Reporter

Weeple

The Education Transformation Team (ETT), in May, will launch a mathematics strategy for primary schools experiencing the greatest challenges in the subject area, according to Frank Weeple, executive director of the ETT.

The ETT was formed after the task force report on education was tabled in Parliament in 2004. The report, commissioned by then Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, made several recommendations to transform the education system.

Greatest challenges

"What we are doing is targeting the 50 schools with the greatest challenges and then we will have a wider group," Weeple told The Gleaner yesterday, during an interview at his New Kingston offices.

Weeple said the education ministry had focused mainly on literacy, but many students and schools grappled with numeracy.

The executive director said the mathematics strategy for Jamaica had been drafted and examined by several stakeholders and would be launched by the end of May.

"This will include how to target those schools with the greatest difficulty. One of the big challenges about primary schools and about teachers in primary schools (is that some) lack the confidence and actually the content in numeracy and mathematics to be able to really teach that effectively and that's one of the key issues," said Weeple.

Six streams

He disclosed that a national numeracy coordinator had been appointed to drive the process and that five regional numeracy coordinators had been hired and two more were about to take up posts.

The ETT has six work streams to carry out the transformation process. They are modernisation, infrastructure and facility, school leadership and management, curriculum teaching and learning, behaviour and community and stakeholders engagement and communications.