The As­so­ci­a­tion of De­nom­i­na­tion­al Boards of Ed­u­ca­tion (ADBE) is ques­tion­ing why Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath has not met with the body to dis­cuss press­ing is­sues af­fect­ing schools, in­clud­ing staff short­ages, in­dis­ci­pline and sup­port for spe­cial needs stu­dents.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the ADBE said it had for­mal­ly re­quest­ed an ur­gent meet­ing with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion af­ter re­peat­ed at­tempts over the past year to en­gage the min­is­ter failed to ma­te­ri­alise.

The as­so­ci­a­tion, which rep­re­sents 23 de­nom­i­na­tion­al boards and over­sees 43 of the coun­try’s 134 sec­ondary schools and 341 of 477 pri­ma­ry schools, said of­fi­cials had pre­vi­ous­ly sug­gest­ed dates for meet­ings but lat­er post­poned them, with no con­firmed en­gage­ment to date.