PE teacher wants drastic curriculum change to further boost sports development

The physical education teacher at the Barrouallie Secondary School, Chester Morgan is calling for a drastic change to the current school curriculum, so that the sporting talent evident in schools across the nation does not go to waste.

Morgan, who is also the Technical Director of Team Athletics SVG told SEARCHLIGHT that if St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) is to truly benefit in the long term changes must be effected to the schools’ curriculum. He recognized that some students are not as academically inclined as some of their colleagues. Therefore there should be changes to the curriculum to nurture the athletic talents of students who are more inclined to sports so as to enable St. Vincent and the Grenadines to be a real competitor on the world stage.

“It needs a drastic change,” Morgan stated.

Giving an example, he said the Barrouallie Secondary School will usually be assigned students on the lower end of the CPA results list but persons “expect us to do the same curriculum as Girls’ High School which has the top 100 Girls, and we must complete the syllabus in the same rate and same time.”

He said “I am looking at a more local environment, getting more restricted, and when I say restricted I say [fewer] academic subjects for the students, more technical subjects geared towards them having fun. I am saying that school is very rigid, it kills creativity and anything outside of school,when it’s not educational to the persons who are in charge, they see it as a waste of instructional time.”

Morgan contends that “…when you’re outside with kids, there are other life lessons that you can teach them, so really and truly there needs to be a shift … a drastic shift in the education system. At the moment we have some buildings where Thomas Saunders and High School presently have school. That is the best place for us right now to open a sports school because we already have the fields and facilities and everything there. We should go that way”.

Turning to this year’s Inter-Secondary Schools’ Athletics Championships, Morgan said he was not surprised at the competitiveness of the March 30, meet in which the usually dominant Barrouallie Secondary School won the female title with 398 points, and was edged out of the top spot for another year by the St. Vincent Grammar School that amassed 314 points in the male division. The Barrouallie Secondary School placed second in the male division with 310 points.

Morgan attributes the level of competitiveness to coaches paying more attention to their craft; more information being disseminated both to students and coaches; and better training of student athletes and coaches.

“There are better plans from the coaches and Team Athletics; there are better plans in the primary school system and now everyone has started to work harder, even children are now putting in more work so the best thing at the moment is that the coaches are doing their work, which is great. You can see the schools having different things, and we have a lot of programmes whereby schools are now pushing the face of the athlete like what was done with AJ.”

Morgan also believes that “the awareness by the media is helping the competition at the moment, but kudos to the coaches; they’re actually putting in the work.”