Uptick in pre-primary enrolment

There has been a recorded 22.4 per cent increase in enrolment of three-year-olds and a 5.4 per cent increase in the enrolment of fouryear-olds at primary schools across Barbados over the last year, with the introduction of the Ministry of Education and Transformation’s Universal Pre-primary Education.

This was revealed by Chief Education Officer Ramona Archer-Bradshaw, who also noted that St Mary’s Primary School and the Lawrence T. Gay Memorial School welcomed three-yearolds for the first time this new school year, while Westbury Primary School “expanded to accommodate even more students in the early years.”

“While we are focused on building numeracy and literacy across all of our schools, we recognise that it is important to give our students the foundation that is required from early. Basic education in our Education Act starts from five and goes up until 16. But we said this year, we are going to expand it, so that very early on, from three years old, our children can be exposed to formal education.