Minister of Educational Transformation Chad Blackman on Wednesday announced plans to ask ministers to require all secondary school students to participate in a community-based organisation — a step he described as transformative for national development.
At a graduation ceremony for student ambassadors for child rights, organised by UNICEF at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre (LESC), Blackman said he intends to bring the proposal to Cabinet soon.
The initiative stops short of mandatory national service, usually through the military, but he told Barbados TODAY the idea of community service is grounded in the belief that academic performance alone does not fully equip young people for the future.
“So the idea is that our children must know and understand the importance of community-based activities, but in particular service,” he explained. “What we are doing is to ensure that once you are in secondary school, from first form right up to the end, you must be involved in an activity where you understand citizenship, civic structures, how to work with your peers, how to give back to society, and understand how the country works.”
According to the minister, involvement in service organisations will help students develop essential life skills that traditional classroom instruction does not provide. He stressed that such exposure must begin well before students leave the school system.
“Even before you leave school, the idea is that all of our children must be exposed to what that looks like, and to build that capacity,” he said.
Blackman framed the move as a first for Barbados and a pivotal step for nation-building.
“For the first time in the history of our country, the idea is to make it mandatory, and to build out the future of Barbados. This is a transformation of nation-building,” he said.
While acknowledging that academic achievement remains important, he emphasised that preparing well-rounded young people requires a broader approach.
“It is not just about the grades and academics. Yes, that is important, of course, but it is really about saying to the future we are preparing our students who will go on to be adolescents, who will go on to be adults… preparing to lead the world. All of these are tools that we are giving our children.”
Blackman added that mandatory service would place Barbadian students on par with their peers internationally.
“Ultimately, we are giving our children a global head start because their counterparts in Asia, in Africa, in the Arab world are already doing these things in many respects,” he said. “We have a duty as a government and as a country to ensure that once a child passes through our education system, irrespective of whether they are born here or have moved to Barbados, we are preparing them for that future.”
(SB)
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