Region Six to get centre for special needs students

EDUCATION Minister Ronald Thwaites has pledged to identify funds in the next budget for the establishment of a special diagnostic and care centre for students with special education needs in Region Six.

Thwaites made the announcement on Friday while addressing teachers, principals and school board chairpersons at the Region Six Back-to-School Conference held at the Portmore Holiness Christian Church in St Catherine.Region Six encompasses the parishes of Clarendon and St Catherine.Thwaites, earlier this year, announced that three special care centres will be established in regions two, four and five by the end of this year.The facilities will be located at the Church Teachers’ College in Manchester; Sam Sharpe Teachers’ College in St James; and the College of Agriculture Science and Education in Portland and are estimated to cost the Government about $40 million.“I’m sorry that we haven’t been able to include a proper diagnostic centre in Region Six in this year’s budget, but I want to promise you, here and now, that in the next budget, whatever else we have to do, we’re going to set up a proper Mico-type care centre, whether it is in Old Harbour, Spanish Town or May Pen, to serve your parishes,” he said.Thwaites said that the centre, in addition to the other three diagnostic facilities to be established in rural Jamaica, will alleviate the need for parents to take their children to Kingston for assessment.He said that this will also lessen the demand on the services of the Mico Child Assessment and Research in Education (CARE) Centre, which is currently the only such facility in Jamaica.Thwaites stated that the move is in keeping with Government’s plans to revitalise and transform the education system with special emphasis on early childhood and special education.“We need to face the facts. We know that probably some 20 per cent of our children fall somewhere on this spectrum of mild to serious education deficiency for one reason or another.“Instead of putting them at the back of the class and instead of saying, ‘I can’t reach this person’, we need to increase the number of people in our schools, who have the capacity and the training to deal with those students, who are in difficult circumstances and who need to be diagnosed and have the appropriate therapy at the earliest stage possible,” he stated.Thwaites said that the centres will be properly staffed with professionals in the area of special education and will also serve as a training ground for teachers, who want to acquire skills in the field.He therefore urged school principals in the region to “start identifying those teachers in your school who have the heart and mind to be a special education teacher”.He said that there is a growing demand for special educators in Jamaica and he hopes to satisfy this need by 2016.THWAITES … we are going to set up a Mico-type centre

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Region Six to get centre for special needs students