Education review coming this year
Education Minister Dr Natalio Wheatley has promised that a comprehensive education review will be done for the local school system this year.
Dr Wheatley made the promise while appearing on the governing Virgin Islands Party’s (VIP) Let’s Talk radio show earlier this week.
His promise came in response to an appeal by a caller who said it has been some 22 years since a comprehensive and scientific review of the BVI’s education has taken place.
“This education review, as we have seen in the past, helps to tell us what the problems are, what we should do and so forth,” the caller said.
Dr Wheatley said the previous education review was done by Premier Andrew Fahie when he served in the role of Education Minister in a previous incarnation of the VIP administration just after the 1999 elections.
Scholarship program revamp
Meanwhile, Dr Wheatley said the government has also been revising its scholarship policy, noting that there will be a mechanism in place for persons to give their views on how the policy is being formed.
“We want feedback on this policy, we’re doing interesting things with the policy. [For example], ee proposed an increase in the amount of the scholarship, from $18,000 to $20,000,” Dr Wheatley said.
He also noted that there have been adjustments to the distance education aspect of the policy since there had been issues with this area in the past.
“Scholarships has been a real point of focus for this administration since coming into office. We started the Scholarship Abroad programme which was shut down for a few years after hurricanes Irma and Maria. We, as an administration, knew what kind of challenges it would cause to the people of the Virgin Islands if we did not start that back right away,” Dr Wheatley continued.
He said the actual number of scholarships that are normally given out has also been increased and these are in addition to the significant amount of grants that the government has disbursed during its tenure.
“When you see the statistics in terms of how many persons we’ve helped with school, it will certainly astound you and we are going to be presenting those statistics for you shortly as we’ll give a report on the Scholarship Abroad programme which has been restarted for a few years now,” the Education Minister said.
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U done cause a mess for my child. Go sit dung…
The only think this review needs to say is to remove Natalio Wheatley as minister for education with immediate effect. It doesn’t have to say anything further. Education was on the move under the previous government. I don’t care what anybody else have to say on this. I am not into politics and I don’t ask for handouts so I could objectively speak. He is not ready for this level of responsibility.
Yes, I remember the education review under Andrew Fahie. How could any teacher forget that disastrous so called review by a woman who he brought here that had no experience in education at all and paid her hundreds of thousands of dollars. Up to this day no report was done.
Everything ‘coming’ now, after they wasted 3 years spending, breaking down, lying, promising and look around. If you remove the projects that NDP left under the CDB loan, the only things VIP have done are redirect traffic and fix the L-Shaped building at ESHS and even that was only done because NDP left the plans etc. in place. VIP ARE A F**KING WASTE OF TIME!
Get Walwyn back as Education Minister!! He was not perfect but FAR FAR FARRRRRR BETTER than this complete waste!
We need to rebrand the VIP as the UP’s Government because I have never seen/heard so much “COMING SOON!” in all my life until the last few weeks.
We ain’t letting you all back in: we suffer badly under all you: and we na ga forget – better vote for the lesser of the two evils boss- VIP all the way
We not letting sowande back in so you keep blogging too
He going around asking for second chance but guess wha we are not taking that road because he had 3 clear years to correct himself. Man get from under we gazebo. Go run in the 8th
This Minister has no shame. There is no allocation in the 2022 budget for this review. He has been swiftly offering knee jerk reactions to each and every question asked about the future of education. Natalio, you are out of your league in this area, you climbed into a field that you had no true knowledge about. The past 3 years cannot be returned to our children, teachers nor parents. You should shoulder some responsibility and admit that you have not given the Education sector the effort it deserved.