PARENTS AND CHILDREN VIEWING CRAFT CREATED DURING SUMMER SCHOOL BY STUDENTS WHO DEFERRED WRITING THE 2007 BARBADOS SECONDARY SCHOOLS’ ENTRANCE EXAMINATION.
Barbadian parents have been advised not to give their school-aged children “too much spending money”.
This call has come from Minister of State in the Ministry of Education, Cynthia Forde, who was speaking at the closing ceremony of the Ministry’s Summer School at the Whitepark Wesleyan Holiness Church today.
Ms. Forde said that parents needed to prepare lunch or allow their children to have school meals because “some children get so much money … that they may be taken advantage of by some dishonest persons. Don’t let them feel that material things are more important,” she advised.
Minister Forde also encouraged parents to motivate their children as much as possible, especially their boys, stressing that men must uplift society and work in partnership with women. “We need to nurture our boys and make them feel just as important as the girls,” she said.
She noted that even if a child was not doing as well as the parents would like them to, the child should be shown that their parents love them. “Do not insult them… they may be late developers and we should not demean them… All these children have potential and will make the nation proud,” she stressed.
The Summer School Programme, which was organised for students who deferred writing this year’s Barbados Secondary Schools’ Entrance Examination, accommodated children aged seven to 11 from public and private schools across the island. They benefited from additional academic assistance and stimulating extra curricular activities such as physical education, craft, dancing, music and storytelling. There was also a Parents’ Evening, where parents and teachers interacted and discussed there children’s progress, and participated in motivational sessions.
Summer School Coordinator, Tyrone Norville, made reference to the Summer School’s theme which was, ‘Yet Still I Rise’. He said: “Children must be able to be like a rubber ball, to bounce back any time he or she hits the ground.”
Mr. Norville said tours to the Wildlife Reserve and Farley Hill were an important aspect of the Summer School. “Outings build language ability…if your children don’t have anything to talk about, they won’t write well…We write what we speak,” he pointed out. He also shared a testimony from a parent, who said that her son was now more eager to read and do his homework as a result of attending the programme.