The Tribune

By PAVEL BAILEY

THE Ministry of Education celebrated the launch of its new curriculum yesterday.

Senior members of the Ministry of Education gathered in celebration for the curriculum launch yesterday. This update to the curriculum aims to modernise the Bahamian syllabus and make it more relevant to current students.

Education director Marcellus Taylor spoke of the need for this new curriculum as he applauded the hard work and effort of the many teachers who had drafted it.

He said that it raises the quality of education offered in the country to be on par with the rest of the world.

“I am proud to say that all of my colleagues recognised the importance of us having these relevant curriculums. Curricula that are relevant for the day, Curricula that speak to what the students are interested in, but also the changes in society.

“Modernising in different ways, including the inclusion of technologies into the curriculum, so that what we are offering our children is no less, no less than what children would get in any other jurisdiction in the world.”

Education Minister Glenys Hanna Martin in her address at the launch said that the new curriculum sought to usher in a new generation of brilliance in this nation.

“The objective of this process of education delivery must be to create in our precious children and young people critical thinking, a commitment to excellence, an ethical grounding and a proud and confident new generation,” she said.

“In the review and design of our curriculum, we must seek to create a living and dynamic road map which journeys our children to a place of self-realisation and comprises more than a space for the accumulation of facts and information, but a space which awakens talents, brilliance, the optimism, the courage for objective analysis of our external reality.”

After the event Leja Burrows, assistant director of education in the early childhood education section, said that the new curriculum means a new philosophy for preparing new students for the 21st century.

“We know that times have changed and that students need new skills to be competent and confident in the world today and for the future. And so, we recognise that there’s practices and new strategies and our curriculum must be relevant, so that children cannot only function, but function well,” she said.

She said in 2018 the ministry started a curriculum development cycle that spurred the development of the new curriculum.

She also said that education stakeholders’ recommendations helped in the development and that while the foundations are the same it introduces a new approach to education.

When asked when the new curriculum would be introduced to schools across the country, Ms Burrows said that it should be launched in public schools by the start of the new academic year.