Minister of Education, Science and Technology Jerome Fitzgerald appealed to teachers last night to be more concerned about students with learning disabilities, and said he expects that with training they will do a better job of identifying those students this year.

"They must be more flexible and concerned when they encounter obstacles to learning," said Fitzgerald in his back to school national address.

"While we don't expect for them to be diagnostic specialists, however, we do expect that with training they will be able to detect when the learning challenges of our students stem from more than behavioral issues.

"We recognize that leadership and instruction are only two of the areas we have to address going forward. Part lies with the decision making at the top. Hence, you will see the introduction of four major initiatives which we anticipate will have a tremendous impact on our education system."

Among those initiatives, according to Fitzgerald, is the opening of a special needs school at the former Our Lady's Catholic Primary School.

The school is expected to be a center for intervention, training, teaching and research for mild to more serious learning disabilities.

Fitzgerald said he expects that facility, once established, to be the envy of the region.

Other initiatives include the opening of the Mable Walker Professional Development Institute, which will offer further training to all private and public school administrators, teachers and education employees, and the introduction of the Standardized Graduation Diploma, which is expected to ensure that every child obtains a minimum basic education before leaving the school system.

Fitzgerald also heralded the conversion of T.G. Glover Primary into a research and development school, where officials from his ministry and The College of The Bahamas will come together to come up with optimum intervention strategies.

"As mentioned previously, significant work is underway in the area of special education with the opening of the special needs center at Our Lady's," Fitzgerald said.

"Through the establishment of this facility we expect to make greater inroads to diagnosing and treating students with mild to severe learning disabilities."

Fitzgerald encouraged educators to be more accountable and said that as instructional leaders they must commit to taking action.

"Action is needed in the form of interventions to achieve meaningful and measured changes in our educational system," he said.

"Being district superintendent, curriculum officer and principal comes with the obligation to make a change in the status quo and to act with a sense of urgency to address the inadequacies within our educational system, which have existed for far too long."

As previously reported, only six schools out of approximately 100 averaged a grade of C+ or above in the Bahamas General Certificate Secondary Education exams, according to education officials.

Fitzgerald will tour several public and private schools today as thousands of students return to school.

Click here to read more at The Nassau Guardian