Come Monday, every public primary school student will follow a new schedule: eight periods instead of seven, with a mandatory daily reading block.
The Ministry of Educational Transformation says the change aims to make literacy a structured priority across all year groups.
But the move has already drawn sharp criticism from veteran educator Dr Ian Marshall, who warns that without proper diagnostic groundwork and targeted support, the initiative risks becoming another well-meaning gesture that fails to reach the students who need it most.
“It was with a degree of angst that I read the circular,” Marshall told Barbados TODAY, before posing a series of pointed questions about the programme’s foundations. Chief among them: whether any diagnostic testing had been done to assess the nature and extent of reading challenges across age groups, and whether that data informed the design of the new literacy programme.
In the circular issued to principals on August 29, Chief Education Officer Dr Ramona Archer-Bradshaw announced that the traditional schedule of seven 40-minute periods would be replaced by eight periods of 35 minutes each. The revision carves out a daily reading slot branded ‘Time to S.O.A.R’ (Strengthen Our Ability to Read), which will be mandatory for all year groups.
Teachers will be required to:
• Use set programmes based on class level.
• Teach Jolly Phonics (a systematic phonics programme) in reception classes.
• Teach literacy blocks focused on vocabulary and comprehension for Classes 2-4.
Schools were told to submit updated timetables by Monday to implement these changes.
“In any age cohort, you would have varied reading abilities and challenges,” Marshall explained. “The question, therefore, is how could providing a reading period for 35 minutes enable a teacher to address such variations among the student population?”
Marshall, who has worked across primary, secondary and tertiary levels for more than three decades, argued that without proper resources and individualised support, the new timetable risks burdening teachers while leaving struggling pupils behind.
“Reading challenges, like mathematics, cannot be solved by simply allocating more space on the timetable,” he said. “Such a situation is a recipe for the frustration of teachers and students alike.”
He argued that complex conditions such as dyslexia, fluency problems, phonemic awareness issues, or difficulties with word attack skills cannot be resolved in large-group settings.
“So, while we say that every teacher is a teacher of reading, that only holds true if the child or children are already able to read. Once we move into the realm of reading challenges, no one-day training for teachers will suffice,” he said.
Marshall said there was a reading specialist at a school with which he was acquainted, and every day she had worked with children, but never with more than two or three at a time. He explained this was because reading challenges required individualised intervention and that serious reading challenges could not be addressed in plenary.
Beyond the logistics, he also warned that the programme could even deepen children’s aversion to reading if poorly executed.
“We need to look at the psychological impact of foisting on students a mandatory reading period, in circumstances where students are already scarred from their inability to read and in circumstances where the commensurate resources are not provided. The reading period can become the bane of their existence, and rather than promoting a love for reading, it could promote a hatred for reading,” he cautioned.
The educator, however, stressed that he supported literacy programmes in principle but insisted the current rollout was flawed.
Marshall had this message for policymakers: “Stop treating education as a PR exercise or, as one songwriter, John King, said, ‘how many more must carry this load?’ I am begging for the children’s future.”
The ministry has promised to provide “necessary support during the transition”.
sheriabrathwaite@barbadostoday.bb
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