The Ministry of Education, Youth, Sports and Culture welcomed incoming Permanent Secretary Elvis Morain and bade farewell to outgoing Permanent Secretary with responsibility for Education, Finley Jeffrey, on Thursday, 29 September.
Jeffrey served at the Ministry of Education from March 2018 to December 2018, during which time he began acting in the post of Permanent Secretary. From July 2022 to September 2022, he had dual responsibility for the Ministries of Education and ICT. Jeffrey will now manage the latter ministry exclusively.
Morain was Chief Education Officer during the period March 2015 to June 2018 and most recently, served as the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, in addition to being Supervisor of Elections. Morain will now assist in fulfilling the current transformative mandate of the Ministry of Education.
This Ministry thanks the outgoing Permanent Secretary for his invaluable contribution to the operations of the ministry and for bolstering staff morale during his tenure. We also look forward to an equally harmonious and productive working relationship with Morain.
GIS
The Dickon Mitchell Administration needs to convene a colloquium on the subject of educational reform with the greatest urgency as part of its TRANSFORMATIVE AGENDA. The current status quo in which students are (competitively) allowed and encouraged to sit for upwards of 18 subjects really does not make any practical or even pragmatic sense in today’s world, or in any kind of imaginary world. The only thing that might be said about such a state of affairs is that it gives bragging rights to students obtaining, say, more than a maximum of 8 subjects over other students who might have passed a lesser number. If the purpose of getting an education is regarded as an essential step towards acquiring the skills to be considered literate, or as the key to securing a well-paid job, or even as a passport for admission to the tertiary landscape, there is no sensible argument that could be made as to any likely advantage which a student having 18 subjects with mostly grades of 3s or 4s and a couple 1s and 2s might accrue over another student having 6 or 8 subjects with mostly 1s and 2s. Being a jack of all trades might still be commendable in this day and age but the British economist’s, Adam Smith, insights into the benefits of focusing on people’s core competencies are just as applicable in today’s world as they were in the 18th. century. Generally speaking, people (and students in particular) have different aptitudes in different areas and by directing limited resources to a person’s areas of strength, the productivity level would be increased, scarce resources would be better utilized, and there would be more time left to engage in other kinds of productive and social activities. Such is the modus operandi of the South Koreans who are always featured at the top of the educational ladder, and who begin to streamline their students for their core competencies as early as the later part of the elementary level. It is only by deliberating on such issues in the setting of a symposium or colloquium in which different kinds of ideas are bandied about that the NDC’s TRANSFORMATVE AGENDA on education could really begin to take shape. By the way, the CXC Secretariat has a war chest of a warping $100,000,000 million (plus) in fees paid by “poor people” and “poor people’s children”. And so, they would always be on the side of students sitting for as many subjects as the students, their parents, and their school would like them to.