St. Maarten needs clear directives for
implementing compulsory education
~ Says Commissioner of Education ~
PHILIPSBURG--With immigration playing a major role in attempts to introduce compulsory education, Commissioner of Education Sarah Wescot-Williams says St. Maarten needs clear directives from the Central Government on its implementation.
In a letter to Education Minister Omayra Leeflang in 2007, the Executive Council had indicated its willingness to cooperate with the Minister on this issue, Wescot-Williams told reporters at Wednesday’s Executive Council press briefing.
She debunked recent remarks attributed to Leeflang in which it was suggested that St. Maarten was not following up on the issue of implementing compulsory education.
The Commissioner said she had received correspondence from the Minister on the issue and St. Maarten had forwarded a letter to the minister in 2007 seeking clarification on certain issues and requesting that clear directives be given to St. Maarten. The Commissioner said she had not yet received a response to this correspondence.
“In 2007 the Executive Council of St. Maarten had sent a letter to the minister indicating that as far as we are concerned, we needed clear directives and instructions not so much regarding compulsory education, but also questions that had arisen with regard to the entire Immigration aspect,” she said.
“We asked the minister to confer with her colleague, the Minister of Justice (David Dick), so that we could have been apprised of a position by the Government of the Netherlands Antilles.”
She said a reprieve announced by Lt. Governor Franklyn Richards in 2006 giving parents a chance to file for the papers for their undocumented children based on a directive from the Justice Minister apparently had contradicted an earlier position of Leeflang.
“This contradicts exactly the policy that the Minister of Education has sent out with respect to compulsory education,” Wescot-Williams said, adding that the “manual” on compulsory education had indicated that only persons who had been registered on the island were “obligated to be in school.”
She said though that in St. Maarten’s situation, this was not always the case. “It is for this reason that we directed that letter to the (education) minister,” she explained. “We would gratefully make use of any possibilities of cooperating with the (education) minister or her office on this matter,” Wescot-Williams said in explaining the content of the letter sent to Leeflang.
“The position of the Island Government is that we need a clear policy and policy directives or directives from the Central Government not only in the area of education, but on Immigration.”
