Education

KINGSTON, 18 October 2023 – More than 100 young people spoke up about their mental health to policy makers and civil society groups when they converged at the National Youth Mental Health Summit on October 11 and 12. UNICEF, in collaboration with the Jamaica Youth Advocacy Network (JYAN) and the Ministry of Health and Wellness (MOHW) brought the…

Pirate ships, bridges, flowers, dinosaurs, cars, castles, trains, tents, campfires, palm trees and house. What do they have in common?  A child’s imagination, sparked by block play.  Recently, with UNICEF support, children across Kingston have been exercising their creativity and critical thinking skills as well life skills such as patience and…, What UNICEF is doing, As part of overall support to the Ministry of Education and Youth’s Learning Recovery and positive parenting efforts, UNICEF continues to work on interactive, child-centred teaching and learning, by promoting opportunities to play as well as contributing to the development of interactive learning tools. These include the Accessible Digital…

Ree-Anna Robinson, 20, has been working with UNICEF Jamaica to provide a youth perspective on education and mental health advocacy for students in Jamaica. Ree-Anna has helped to lead the “Reimagine Education” initiative, addressing the Transforming Education Summit in New York City on behalf of Jamaican students and with U-Report, guided the…, We need to break barriers to education, Our socio-economic barriers to education really stifle our dreams, especially at the tertiary level, where under 30 per cent of the young people in Jamaica actually make it through to university, with a prominent issue being funding of tuition. Further adding to this issue,there are those who are enrolled but may not be able to study what they…, Mental health issues need to be addressed, In Jamaica, we have been good at highlighting basic needs which schools must provide such as food security through feeding programmes. It is easier for us to identify these but we do not pay enough attention to the mental health of students and how to adequately identify and support them until it is much too late. My mental health advocacy was…, What policy makers can do, In addressing structural issues in the education system, I want a safer school environment. I want increased access to mental health services, resources, normalising conversations through holistic sensitisation of all stakeholders who interact with young people. It can’t be left to teachers or guidance counsellors alone, especially when (on…, What’s UNICEF doing?, UNICEF Jamaica is working with young people to bring attention to the need for improved mental health support and care for children and adolescents. One of our critical initiatives is the U-Matter Chatline. It is provided free by UNICEF’s  U-Report  messaging service for youth, connecting users aged 16-24 years to chat anonymously and…

[Scroll down to watch video recapping Play Day JA 2023] We are all wired to play. From the moment we are born, play brings us joy and comfort, builds relationships and opens the door to learning. But importantly, during the first 1,000 days of life, a child’s brain is twice as active as an adult’s. And it’s clear when you see it – watching a young…

This manual is designed to guide grades 1 -3 teachers in the use of games in the teaching and learning process. It is meant to complement the activities already identified in the National Standards Curriculum (NSC) Grades 1 – 3 integrated curriculum. January 2016

As schools reopened for full face-to-face learning in September, three school leaders at the Albert Town High School in Trelawny shared their experience with a UNICEF-supported Ministry of Education and Youth initiative that has improved student behaviour and school culture overall. The School-Wide Positive Behaviour Intervention and Support (…, What was your lightbulb moment and what are the key takeaways from the training?, Janice Skeen Miller, Vice-Principal: What that (SWPBIS) training did for us, as a school, was that it helped us to become more aware of how to use the positives to change negative behaviour. The school is now looking at what students are doing that is right and using that to help them to realise when they go wrong. We had our core values displayed…, What did you put in place to implement SWPBIS?, Denise Hughes, Guidance Counsellor: We got a team in place and got persons to buy into the programme. We got all persons on board – teachers, staff members, parents, community personnel – so we could get the programme rolling and created a positive environment because it was a bit negative before. We got students to participate and to feel good…, Thumbs Up Cards and vouchers, Denise Hughes: When a student turns up with an item that was found they will receive a Thumbs Up Card. Five Thumbs Up Cards qualify them for a lunch voucher. We highlight these behaviours in devotion that this person feels confident, and it will impact their self-esteem … and the students are recognized in devotion., How hard was it to get the buy-in?, Denise Hughes: It wasn’t very hard at all. Olando Sinclair: The team not only included teachers. There were parents on the team and the business community. We involved a wide cross-section of the community and of course the students. And with all these persons representing the various stakeholders, the buy-in was pretty good., What was it like before?, Olando Sinclair: They (students) were more aggressive towards each other and authority. We had the rules but when we tried to enforce (them) there was aggression and high levels of indiscipline regarding their uniform, damage to school furniture, a lot of fights and graffiti on the walls. There was no respect for the environment and to authority.…, How are you restarting the initiative after the COVID-19 closure?, Olando Sinclair: We have to be adaptable with the programme. What mattered in 2013 and 2014 are not as relevant now as then. That level of aggression is not there but we are seeing some other things creeping up now. One thing we know is that we have some issues relating to the value that is placed on education. There is the get-rich-quick culture…, How is the school combatting this culture?, Olando Sinclair: We are in the process of trying to understand (it). The children … we have to involve them. They have a richer understanding as to what is happening. They have the peer influence. Getting the children involved in it … that would help us to put an effective plan in place and that takes some work and will help us with adaptability.…, How did capacity building sessions help staff and prepare for reopening?, Olando Sinclair: At the school level we did several capacity building sessions where we focused on the psychosocial wellbeing of teachers and to include students and parents as well. We also did some sessions on online pedagogy to ensure that teachers are coping with online and prepare us to return to the face-to-face. Because both teachers and…, What were your school’s CSEC passes like this year?, Janice Skeen-Miller: The CSEC passes this year were fairly good. We have just one subject that we were concerned about: Mathematics was our weak point, so we are working on it., Share one success story?, Janice Skeen-Miller: I’ll share with you about one young lady who continues to be a beacon wherever she goes. She came out of a toxic environment but at school we were able to mold her into a role model: she served as a prefect, then head girl and SWPBIS ambassador., Anything else?, Janice Skeen-Miller: One thing that stands out for us, I don’t walk and see graffiti anywhere. Prior to this, as soon as you paint, they would mark up the walls. We are not seeing that happen anymore., What’s UNICEF doing?, Schools like Albert Town High are leading the way as we create mechanisms to share experiences on institutional approaches that can prevent, reduce, mitigate and respond to violence. All children deserve to feel safe at school and the SWPBIS framework gives school teams guidelines to do just that within each of their own unique contexts. UNICEF…

Earlier this year, Jamaican children and adolescents returned to school physically after two years of online learning.  In the wake of the pandemic, their health and safety were of the highest priority. However, COVID-19 is not the only health challenge our students face.  The return to face-to-face classroom interaction comes with some key…

“Ever since I’ve left primary school I’ve been trying to work on my anger. I’m still working on it.”, – Adriel Fraser, aged 14, Adriel is a student of Papine High School in St Andrew, which is surrounded by several community experiencing high rates of violent crime. Recently a 15-year-old student on his way to the school was murdered for his cell phone. However, a just concluded intervention at Papine High focusing on addressing the roots of gender-based violence has given…, Participants show changed attitudes, Implemented by the non-government organization RISE Life Management Services and supported by UNICEF under the global European Union-United Nations  Spotlight Initiative  to address gender-based family violence, the one-year programme which ended in January has delivered positive results despite being restricted to online delivery due to COVID-19…, Empowering males and females, “I believe children live what they learn and I believe everything goes back to the homes, the single parent, the no-dad issue, the single mom who cannot make ends meet and the mom becomes frustrated and takes it out on the child and then the child in turn becomes a product of his environment…..but if we start a place where each one help one then…, Opening up new conversations, Referencing the positive impact on teacher and parents, Barnes goes on to explain, “This programme is special because it brings across new information and provides a certain reinforcement. Teachers have more tools and understand the problems with using coercive methodology.” For parents, “Certain old methods they have had to throw out the window,…, Changing parenting approaches, “We have started to have open discussions about things like about sexual abuse and you know, sometimes GBV. I talk to my daughter about adults approaching her and how she should react. These sessions made me want to understand more, and even when they throw out the question and nobody answer, I had to say something.” Importantly, all the…, What is UNICEF doing?, While the RISE against Gender-based Violence School Based Intervention has come to an end under Phase I of Spotlight, schools are encouraged to develop their own interventions to prevent GBV. This and other Spotlight Initiative activities in schools are strongly linked with the UNICEF-Ministry of Education and Youth School-wide Positive Behaviour…

For anybody reading this who is a Jamaican taxpayer, your main concern might be how public funds are spent, and perhaps like UNICEF, you might also care about how they can best achieve positive results for children? In which case you might be happy to hear about something called Results-Based Budgeting (RBB), where ministries allocate resources on…, Training for champion healthcare, Howard: At the MOHW we take a whole life cycle approach and achieving the SDGs is a benefit to the Jamaican people. For instance, if we address child infant mortality, then more children survive – and so our planning must put in place the right interventions to do so. So, the SDGs might sound aspirational in some ways, but they have real life…, Helping children move up through the grades, Viviene: For us in education, RBB is critical for accountability. As planners if someone needs to understand how we arrived at an outcome we can reference the strategic plan and indicators which measure performance. Measurement and evaluation is part of our planning process. At each level you want children to move seamlessly through the system. We…, Raising performance for the future, Howard: MOHW is wanting to become more performance-based and the knowledge gained from the training, such as modelling a theory of change, will help us to do that and strengthen our measurement and evaluation too. Viviene: For viability of a country, a community, a home, the individual himself or herself must focus on preparing the youth, get…, UN and EU optimistic of improved budgeting, Dr. Garry Conille, United Nations Resident Coordinator:  The UN is proud to be supporting the people and Government of Jamaica to improve efficiency, effectiveness and equity in public expenditure and in so doing accelerating the achievement of the SDGs. We are grateful for the financial contribution of the Joint SDG Fund whose donors include: The…

The Government of Jamaica, through the Ministries of Finance and the Public Service and Education and Youth, in collaboration with the World Bank and UNICEF Jamaica, launched today the Public Expenditure Review (PER) of the Education Sector in Jamaica Public Expenditure Review (PER) of the Education Sector in Jamaica . The Education PER analyses…

The objective of this Public Expenditure Review (PER) is to analyze the adequacy, efficiency and equity of public spending on education in Jamaica. These three aspects will be compared to national and international standards, in line with Jamaica’s educational challenges and goals. To this end, Caribbean countries will serve as regional peers;…

The firm selected for this consultancy is expected to conduct three (3) budget diagnostics analysis (deep dives) to assess service delivery of key programmatic areas of the Ministry of Education and Youth. The consultancy also includes a training component to key staff in the Ministry on budget analysis techniques that will take place concurrently…