By Grace-Anne King on Wednesday, 9 March, 2022 at 07:35 PM

Academically struggling students could get an additional two years in school if the new educational reform bill, proposed by Dr. Idamay Denny, is passed.

Dr. Denny, who revealed the proposal while discussing the Appropriation Bill 2022 in the House of Assembly, was concerned about the number of primary and secondary school students who may not be getting the required help they need to succeed.

While many parents shared the belief that an educational reform is needed, some remained skeptical of how student performance would be judged and how students would be aided.

Solomon Bartlett, a father of three, applauded Dr. Denny's proposal, stating that the additional years of focused teaching would only benefit students.

“I support anything that is for the bettering of the younger generation, because this would advance the society in the long run,” Bartlett said.

Sharing similar sentiments, Kerrie James, a mother of one, believed that the extra years could be advantageous to children leaving secondary schools with few or no qualifications.

“These two years would give students the opportunity to get that extra help by focusing on the subjects that they didn’t quite grasp before,” James indicated.

Parent Damian Goddard, was concerned about how teachers and school officials would aid those students that did not perform to the expected academic standards.

“They [the school] can’t continue doing what they previously did before, because that approach didn’t work in the first place,” Goddard pointed out.

He added that the focus should be on targeting the cause of a student’s underperformance in order to successfully aid them by the end of the two additional years of teaching.

Maylean Boyce, a mother of two, explained that while she was in favour of the reform, she was critical of how it would be implemented and questioned how school officials would determine a student’s academic development.

“I am not talking about grades, because if some students knew that they could get an extra two years, it might cause them to slack off,” Boyce said.