By Shirley Thomas

THIRTY years and continuously moving from strength to strength, the National Centre for Education Resource Development (NCERD) has been described by Chief Education Officer, Mr. Olato Sam as the engine that drives the education system. And, noting that NCERD has been blessed with tremendous human capital, Mr. Sam posited that the education system cannot progress unless NCERD causes it to do so.
This confidence reposed in NCERD by the Chief Education Officer was made known as he addressed the entity’s 30th Anniversary Service last Monday at its headquarters on Battery Road, Kingston, home of the former Cyril Potter College of Education.
Acknowledging that it has designed a curriculum appropriate to the needs of our children, Sam said NCERD has assembled some of the finest minds in education, and as a consequence, is producing the building blocks for the education system.
He, therefore, called on the Ministry of Education to support the entity and maximize its potential.
With respect to aspects of the curriculum designed by NCERD, Sam said the system already has the benefit of tremendous resources, which could service the nation well for the next 30 years.
He said it is imperative that NCERD be the hub of innovation, a state of affairs that must be complemented by specialists who are on the cutting edge of education delivery, “always pushing the envelope and not managing the status quo.”
Meanwhile, he called on those educators in the audience to also ensure that NCERD continues to be the repository of the data that forms the empirical basis for all of our policy decisions.
He, however, noted that there are still situations where educators in the system are starved for resources; people like education managers who are still desperate for guidance and are really grappling with ways to become the strong managers that the system needs.
He noted, too, that there are situations where “our children are screaming out for better life skills,” which led him to admonish the gathering to define for themselves the pathways through which such knowledge is systematically being introduced to the system.
In concluding his presentation, Sam thanked NCERD for the solid foundation it has laid for our education system, noting that it is with great enthusiasm and a lot of forward thinking that we look to the impact NCERD will have over the next 30 years.
Former NCERD Director, Mr. Mohandatt Goolsarran, who served from 2001 – 2012, reflected on past achievements, and looked at some of the innovative programmes the entity initiated over the las 30 years.
Goolsarran recalled that NCERD embarked on a number of initiatives, particularly in the area of curriculum development.
“We examined with consultants from overseas, some locally, to look at the structure of our curriculum,” he said, adding, “It was under the guidance of Professor Dennis Craig that we had the resource guide.
“And, as we developed, we looked at the involvement of the various units mentioned within NCERD, but the hub of all those units is really the curriculum.”
Initiatives taken include:

• A process of democratization of curriculum delivery in schools, involving parents, social groups, while establishing a Curriculum Advisory Committee.
• Management of Curriculum Development and an education management course borrowed from South Africa and refashioned for our local context. That course was aimed at helping education managers see through the management of the curriculum. It started in 2002 and was conducted with the support of many of the educators attending the self-same Thanksgiving Service, Goolsarran said.
• The expanding of teacher training across the country, with NCERD teams travelling outside of Georgetown and into the regions to deliver quality training to the teachers. Goolsarran acknowledged the commitment of the NCERD team to reaching out to the needs of teachers outside of Georgetown.
• And more essentially, the ‘Non-Graduate Certificate’, considered as having an phenomenal impact on Teachers who were not graduates of the CPCE Teacher Training Programme. Goolsarran outlined that it was introduced in response to critiques on the relationship between teacher quality and educational outcome.
• Non-graduate courses in Mathematics, Science and English were developed, with certificates being awarded after rigorous training both by distance and face-to-face interaction, coupled with examinations.

“We carried out a level of marketing strategies to get more teachers involved. Initially we had over fifty teachers on the programme,” he said, adding that it was the hope that the Teaching Service Commission, after a number of persons would have graduated from that training programme, would have used that qualification as the standard for non-graduate teachers to be appointed as head of a Mathematics, Science or Language Department.
“If you are a non-graduate, then you must at least possess the non-graduate certificate. I think that is still in the making,” Goolsarran said.
Another major initiative embarked on was the Learning Channel. “The Learning Channel is out of early experiences with promoting distance education through television. That initiative started in 1996 and because of popular demand for the sponsorship, we have established the basis for establishing a 24 hour learning channel. We had strong support from Dr. Sita Roth who was very instrumental in leading the way forward. Local content was used as far as possible, with support from the international arena and brought on television programme for other grades in the secondary school.
Goolsarran said that in further attempting to democratize the education system NCERD walked through the process of the evaluation aspect of the curriculum and in that process, invited teachers across to help develop test items.
“We had training programmes to guide them in test construction, in service of evaluating, marking and grading. Regions sent representatives to help in the whole process of marking, setting and grading. In that way we found that children across the country started to perform equally, like children in Georgetown. And we felt good, and that is something that we need to press on. That is where we are going to really influence the teaching – both within the home and at school,” Goolsarran said.
He stressed that based on NCERD’s interaction with teachers, learning resources were identified to help both students and teachers. Additionally, many of the earlier versions of their text books were subject to review to bring the content in line with what’s happening within the Caribbean Region and even wider afield.
Other speakers included: Ms. Jennifer Cumberbatch, Director, NCERD; Ms. Inge Nathoo, Secretary General , UNESCO; Ms. Florine Dalgety, Former Director of NCERD; Rev. Raymond Coxall and Ms. Delma Nedd, Permanent Secretary within the Ministry of Education.
According to current Director of NCERD, Ms. Jennifer Cumberbatch, NCERD was established in October of 1986 and was a joint venture between the Ministry of Education and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
The Thanksgiving service, richly spiced with musical entertainment provided by teachers of CPCE and a steelpan solo by Vijay Sharma, a student of Queen’s College, was hosted to celebrate 30 years of commitment to providing resources and training for the nation’s children and teachers, according to Ms. Cumberbatch.