All hands on deck to save our boys, teachers’ union president says

The president of the Antigua & Barbuda Union of Teachers (A&BUT) has made recommendations to bring the young men of the twin island nation on par with their female counterparts where performance in education is concerned.
Ashworth Azille said major stakeholders in the society need to come together to stop the trend of under-performance of boys.
“When we begin to assess the current trend that we are seeing and in our effort to try to arrest it, it requires that we all as stakeholders sit down beyond the usual editorializing that comes after events such as these to find some very concrete and meaningful solutions, Azille said.
“The sad reality is, that the school alone cannot raise that child. The school alone cannot give that child all the tools he or she requires to be successful in life and so it requires the home, the social services, all the nongovernmental organisations and the church in conjunction with the school, come together so that we can best prescribe what would be a winning solution for our boys.”
The A&BUT president pointed to several possible factors that he believes may be contributing to the downward trend in the male performance. These include, not enough male teachers and the curriculum and classroom instruction, but chief among these, he said, was literacy among boys.
“One of the key areas that we have to address is literacy. Our boys are lagging behind in literacy and as a result it will have a negative impact on all other content areas,” Azille told OBSERVER media yesterday.
These sentiments echoed those of noted educator, Anthonyson King, who also lamented the need for improved literacy among boys in Antigua & Barbuda.
(More in today’s Daily Observer)