Maria Holder Nursery School in Gall Hill Set to Become a Centre of Excellence for Early Childhood Education in September

Minister of Education Kay McConney has unveiled plans for the Maria Holder Nursery School in Gall Hill, Christ Church to become a “centre of excellence” in September.

The “laboratory school”, with a focus on play-based learning, will serve as a model for other schools that accommodate three-to four-year-olds, she disclosed on Thursday.

“Emerging research is telling us that play based learning, when we make it fun for children to learn they actually want to learn, and their relationship with learning going forward makes a difference. Our Ministry of Education will be invested in collaboration with some of our international partners, in what is called a Centre of Excellence in Early Childhood Education,” she told attendees at the Early Childhood Development Symposium at Solidarity House.

“We have already started a pilot project where 30 teachers have been trained to date. Plans are continuing with a view to rolling this programme out in the upcoming academic year.”

Teaching at the centre of excellence – which will also serve as a centre for research and training – will be along the Science, Technology, Reading, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STREAM) line.

The development comes half a century after the Erdiston Model School – now the George Lamming Primary School – was opened as a learning lab and pioneered developments in elementary education.

In her keynote speech, Minister McConney emphasised improving early learning delivery islandwide, including an expanded universal pre-primary education programme announced last October to provide universal education access from age three.

She acknowledged that implementing such a programme presented challenges, citing needs for customised spaces and suitably trained teachers. She highlighted a shift to teaching methodologies with educators as “facilitators of learning”.

“Today, teachers must be more than knowledge experts…imparting their knowledge on our young learners,” she said. “As teachers and caregivers, we must become facilitators…encouraging our children to take some ownership and responsibility for part of their process of learning.”

Fiaz Shah, the chief of education at UNICEF’s Barbados-based East Caribbean area office added: “Every aspect of child environment during the first thousand days lays the foundation for their future development.”

The two-day multi-agency symposium, a collaborative effort with the Ministry and UNICEF and hosted by the Child Care Board as part of its activities to mark Child Month, has brought together figures from social care, child protection, education, health and parenting. The Child Care Board’s Gale Carter said it would discuss creating safe, inclusive early childhood environments “to nurture the foundational skills needed for the 21st century learner and beyond”. (SM)