Minister Francis: Education is the nation’s salvation

TOP PRINCIPAL: Charlene Quamina of Rose Hill RC Primary School was adjudged Principal of the Year over the weekend at the Natianal Primary Schools Association’s award ceremony at SAPA. 
PHOTO BY MARVIN HAMILTON - Marvin Hamilton
TOP PRINCIPAL: Charlene Quamina of Rose Hill RC Primary School was adjudged Principal of the Year over the weekend at the Natianal Primary Schools Association’s award ceremony at SAPA. PHOTO BY MARVIN HAMILTON - Marvin Hamilton

Minister in the Ministry of Education Dr Lovell Francis has said education, and not a hole in the ground filled with oil or gas, will be the nation’s salvation. He was speaking at the National Primary Schools Principals Association, (NAPSPA), inaugural principal of the year award at SAPA in San Fernando on Saturday night.

He said TT is at critical junction in its development saying the nation could decide to continue as before and hope for a turnaround or raise up a new generation of thinkers who would propel the nation forward. “We are at a time in our history where, I would suggest, our salvation has to be education.

“We survived very long by doing something ridiculous which is drilling oil out of the ground and letting gas spring up and selling that and we thought that was fine. But we coming to a point where that would either become obsolete, where the world goes green and we have oil and gas that nobody wants or it would run out and then what would we do.”

If ever this country needed competent, willing educators it is now, he said. He however took a swipe at his own ministry saying it is “stuck in the manila folder age’ where everything is relegated to a folder.

“We are still stuck in the 19th century, where everything is in a folder and everything is bureaucratic.

And we are trying to take that ministry from the 19 century, skipping the 20 century and jump into the 21 century.”

He said the ministry is expected to launch education management information system which would enable the education system to become a finely knitted and intuitive system.

He said this required a proper internet and wireless systems as well as buy ins from the schools’ principals before it could become a reality.

Rose Hill RC primary school principal Charlene Quamina was adjudged the association’s first Principal of the Year.

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"Minister Francis: Education is the nation’s salvation"

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