By RESHMA BAAL Friday, January 27 2012

DISPENSING of extra curricular activities in the nation’s schools has been dysfunctional and chaotic and so must be made more organised and holistic. Minister of Education Dr Tim Gopeesingh said he aims to inject order into extra curricular activities through a stakeholders meeting.

The meeting, Making Education Stakeholders Happy (MESH) which was held at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Port-of-Spain, included members from non-Governmental Organi-sations, faith-based organisations and corporate entities.

Gopeesingh said he encouraged extra curricular activities in schools “but there has to be some sort of order to it. It is wrong to say I am not allowing this in schools.”

He said on assuming office in 2010 there were a lot of requests from various corporate bodies to work with the Ministry in assisting the children and education.

However, Gopeesingh clearly stated that any sort of activities much be conducted in a holistic manner.

“Look at the bigger picture when doing something is schools. Days of dabbling in only some of the schools are long gone. If you want to assist do it in literacy and numeracy.

If you want to assist in the schools, assist in training teachers, bringing more programmes to the curriculum. One in every two students in primary schools is under achieving as shown by the National Test,” Gopeesingh said.

He also noted eight secondary schools which were suppose to be built and completed in 2007 by the former administration were not and this had led the ministry into great debt. “We need your assistance in this to bring down cost.”

Gopeesingh noted there were less than 150 teaching days for the year, and so any co-curricular activity must be organised and working together with academic activities.

The Minister also noted the Education Ministry was one of the the most important ministries responsible for human capital development and so Government spent $8 billion on education, in both the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Science, Technology and Tertiary Education last year. “This is 20 percent of Government’s annual expenditure and six percent of annual Gross Domestic Product which is a lot,” he said.