Barbados will expand its reading intervention programmes and launch three new maths initiatives when schools reopen next month, Chief Education Officer Dr Ramona Archer-Bradshaw announced Tuesday.
The moves follow last week’s Ministerial Statement on Education Transformation, in which the government pledged to ensure that every Barbadian child can read by the age of seven by 2027.
Archer-Bradshaw called the promise a necessary step to close gaps in literacy and numeracy across the island’s schools.
The ministry has shifted from an “eclectic” to a structured literacy approach, training over 300 teachers in the Lindamood-Bell programme, which targets comprehension, and phonics-focused Snappy Sounds. Initially piloted in Infant A and B classes reaching 5 000 students, the initiatives will expand to all primary levels as well as secondary remedial teachers starting in September.
“Literacy has been a concern for us for some time now, and that’s the reason why over the past year and a half, we have invested so heavily in the teaching of reading,” Archer-Bradshaw said at the ministry’s Constitution Road headquarters.
Curriculum reforms will also mandate dedicated reading time, while proposed partnerships with the Criminal Justice Research Unit aim to address adult literacy gaps, a spillover from earlier systemic gaps.
The Chief Education Officer expressed confidence that the ministry’s strategies would bear fruit, stating, “When it comes to reading, and it is our belief here at the Ministry of Education that given the strategies that we’ve been using over the past year and a half, and that we will continue to use from between now and 2026, we’ll be able to close the gap when it comes to our school age children.”
Three international programmes will debut in maths classrooms: the Commonwealth of Learning’s collaborative problem-solving model, Make Math Moments’ critical thinking approach, and a Qatar-funded initiative for practical math teaching.
“We find that there are some mathematics teachers who focus on teaching mathematics in a very abstract way … where it’s more procedural than allowing our students to critically think and problem solve to come up with the answers,” Archer-Bradshaw said.
“We want our children not only to be good exam takers, but to be good critical thinkers, to be good communicators, and to be good collaborators, and that’s the reason that we are seeking to put the spotlight on mathematics and remedy the areas where we know need remedying.”
The term begins September 8. (SB)
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