 Education Minister Hon. Sean Edward visited schools in his constituency of Denry North as well as other districts in the island south. While Parliamentary Secretary-Senator Hon. Pauline Antoine Prosper newly appointed Chief Education Officer Beverly Diodoni and Deputy Permanent Secretary Kendall Kodra welcomed back students and teachers in the north of the island after a long summer vacation. The visits also gave education officials a first-hand look at remedial work which had been accomplished during the summer break and in some cases were still in progress. I must say that given some of the challenges we had during the summer preparing schools for today that I'm extremely pleased with what I've seen. Schools are settled, at least the ones that I've visited and the reports coming from the technical personnel from the Ministry of Education who are visiting schools in other parts of the country. The reports are all speaking to schools having been settled, children are in, teachers are at work and this can only augur well for a very successful academic year. The Minister reiterated that one of the areas of focus for the Ministry was in the area of school security and would be interned to transform four secondary schools on the island into TVET centres. We have spent quite a bit of money to be for security at schools by installation of cameras, recruitment of personnel to bolster what we already have. We have made the point before that there is a chronic problem as it relates to youth unemployment and given that the public service does not have the absorptive capacity to employ all of the school users we have to create an environment, an enabling environment where young people can can get trained in skills area where they can be employers of themselves. The Minister wiles on his tour of schools in the island south presented backpacks to the Grace Combined School to the most needy of students. The backpacks were provided by Diamonds International in collaboration with the Rotary Club of Grosile. They made several backpacks available to the Ministry of Education that we will be distributing to students in the various schools across the length and breadth of this country, students whose parents were not able to buy new bags and to give them the materials that they needed. Right now I'm going around the school and I'm looking at students who are in need of such packages and I will select the names and present them. So some students may get bags from other organisations or other places. The government minister Edward says it's committed to providing its citizens with a high quality of education and that its policies like its one laptop per child initiative as well as the one university graduate per household initiative will always reflect that goal. The government in this financial year also increased subventions to teachers through the teaching material allowance by $600 to allow teachers to procure teaching materials and instructional aids to enhance instruction within the classroom. From the communications unit of the Department of Education Innovation and Vocational Training I am Chris Satney.