UWI, SOECATE Project: Supporting Schools, Supporting Students, Supporting SUCCESS.
UWI SOECATE Project is operated by the School of Education, Center for the Assessment and Treatment of Exceptionalities. It is funded by the Culture, Health, Arts, Sports and Education (CHASE) fund and currently offer support to seventeen basic schools and five primary schools. The Project commenced in September 2013 and focuses on assessment and early intervention of early childhood students whose learning potential and performance are deemed “at-risk”. The Directors of the Project are: Dr. Rose Davies, Mrs. Joan Spencer-Ernandez and Dr. Deon Edwards-Kerr. The SOECATE staff consists an Itinerant Teacher, Project Coordinator and Special Educator.
Objectives of the Project include:
- provision of assessment services using a multi-disciplinary approach to include educational, psychological and medical diagnostics for students attending 22 early childhood education institutions;
- facilitation of the early identification of exceptional needs students within the regular classroom who are at risk of school failure;
- in-service training for teachers to prepare them to develop intervention programmes to maximize their students’ potential; and
- hosting of parent workshops to improve parental involvement.
The UWI, SOECATE Project, provides additional support to the schools by donating learning resources such as manipulatives, hands on instructional activities, reading materials for the establishing of class libraries; play equipment; appliances (stoves, refrigerators and freezers), school furniture and project publications which are distributed to teachers.
