Chaos at school campus as uniform stock falls short
(CNS): Frustrations were mounting yesterday when literally hundreds of parents and students were forced to queue in the blazing sun in order to try and get uniforms for the new school year. Following a change in uniform for the new high school system but a delay in their delivery, there will not be enough to go round and parents had to take a chance on queuing up at both the John Gray Campus and the civic centre in Bodden Town yesterday in order to get the school clothes. Parents were also angry that education authorities were not keeping them informedabout what was happening. Although the minister has apologized he said it is beyond government’s control. (Photo courtesy of News 27).
According to reports on New 27, parents were angry that education authorities had not managed to sort out the problem during the long summer period.
Education Minister Rolston Anglin offered his apologies but said the delay was beyond government’s control. “We are going to get through it … by the end of September we will be fully stocked all the schools will have uniforms,” he said. “In four weeks time all of this will be behind us.”
Officials have also issued a dress code for the year 12 students to cover September until the full uniform stock arrives.
Category: Local News
Let me tell you all… I will NEVER be ordering any uniforms pre-ordered again.
I pre-ordered my child unforms and to wait in line for about two and half hours I only got one PE shirt and one pants.
All parents dn’t forget what happen and don’t pre-order because it never make sense.
The question is should education be free without some form of compulsory national service by the students?
This could perhaps be a solution to the indiscipline we are seeing in the public schools, let them do something to payback for their free education.
How about something simple like most of the private school do…polo shirt and khaki or blue pants…You can buy them from Old Navy for $5 for the shirt and $10.00 for the pants…Always in stock and no shortage, you can even order on line.
I wonder when McKeeva Kim Jong Il and Julianna Macdinejad are going to get their fill for themselves and their cronies and give The Cayman Islands back to the people. The three islands are only a gold mine for them and they must judge Caymanians by their own standards of good common sense. (that means "non-existent" common sense). This government is selling our country to the highest bidder, who will put the most money into their own pockets. What gets me is that McKeeva Bush keeps spouting about the press spreading the rumor that the country is broke. Unless he thinks of himself as the international press, he is the only noise I have read about that is spouting it all over the world that the Cayman Islands is broke. Is it any wonder, when he uses country resources to attend the Winter Olympics? Self-promotion is all McKeeva and his cronies think about. It is unfortunate that the couple of good men in the government are going to be brought down with him when the time comes.
What does this have to do with uniforms?
Why is the whole system run in such an amateur way that is blatantly open to corruption and abuse? Oh I forgot, that this is Cayman. We need a full audit of the School Associations . . .
Last year there were several meetings when the subject of school uniforms was raised. The Education Department and the schools urged the Ministry to allow open sourcing. In other words, parents would be able to buy uniforms from Kirks, Fosters, Hurleys or wherever. There would be competition and prices would drop.
The Ministry fwouldn’t let this happen. They had been got to by the HSAs. Members of the HSAs are parents, Caymanians and therefore voters. Most of the Department and teachers are ex-pats and can’t vote. The HSAs have always kept the prices artificially high.
Come on Minister Anglin, we want to know why the school uniform was changed? It worked well all these years, I believe I see the quiet hand of Miss Julie at work.
Once again the UDP wasting our money.
Hey! It’s NOT just the UDP!!! Each successive government wastes our money!
Such an ignorant comment
Where are the new uniforms coming from China?
How in the world did the Minister Rolston Anglin, Education Dept,& HSA sit down and agree to change the school uniforms, not take into account the quanity, time frame, shipping ETA, and availiabilty into consideration????
I want to know who they are purchashing these uniforms from, and request that because i now have to go out and purchase unneccessrary clothing to accomodate the "new requirements" of clothing the school now wants the children to wear therefore I think the cost should be reembursed to the parents, because if you had the clothes already at home you wouldn’t have to now go out and purchase new clothes……
To make up a temporary dress code on a whim just further demonstrates how out of touch with reality our elected leaders truly are! Have either of them been shopping for any clothes or shoes here on the Island recently? Clearly not, otherwise they would be aware of the inlated prices, poor selection, and lousy quality available!
If the Government messed up, why are the people being punished, now having to rush around, trying to find certain clothes for their children and being put through the unexpected extra expense and inconvenience?
Well mistakes are made we CAN get thought that. It is as simpleof using the alternate policy for September. However the inhuman way that parents and children were treated at JGHS by the issuers of uniforms is inexcusable. To even attempt, never mind allow parents and children to bake in the hot sun is unforgiving. There is a school hall. Why was that not used? or the School Hall at another location, where ‘humans’ could be inside the air conditioned building with a place to "sit calmly" while waiting.
This was utter selfishness and showed a great ineptness with the folks handling the uniforms distribution, volunteer or paid worker. Obviously we need more parents to get involved to help our schools…ones with common sense would be prefered.
I taught on GC until last June and now I’m back in the UK. The whole uniform business is dodgy. School Associations sell them, make a huge profit and use some of the money for good causes like trips but a lot of it goes as backhanders to principals and senior staff. We all knew it was going on. Parents are being ripped off.
Please report what you know and where the evidence can be found to the Police.
Police, if you get some info, please treat it seriously and do something about it.
I didn’t need to. Everyone knows about it. Ask to see the accounts but you won’t see them because there aren’t any.
I know of a number of scandals that would result in sackings or court cases in the UK but nothing happens in Cayman because the offenders are exclusively Caymanian.
Lots of people still there in Education know as much or more than I do. Ask a few questions.
Frankly, that is the problem. No one (planning, pensions, health insurance, immigration) does anything when they just know about a problem. Only a formal report/complaint will actually kick anyone into action, and even then only if you are very very lucky.
After Ivan I watched a row of homes looted by a roving band. I saw police drive by a guy with abig plasma TV on his shoulder. The looting continued. I went to the police station to find out why nothing was being done and they assured me there was no looting. The basis for this was "they had not received any reports" – and if I was not willing to give them all my details and sign a statement, it seems what I had to say did not count either. The fact the police "know" seems irrelevant in our rapidly putrefying society.
Unfortunately the poster now back in the UK is probably correct. Almost 20 years ago, Internal Audit found a primary school principal was fiddling parents’ lunch money for their kids. The person was a Caymanian so was transferred to the Education Dept to keep things quiet. Ah so it go.
i’ll tell you all the reason or delay, government made all the parents believe that the uniforms was order and on the way, so that parents can prepay ahead for their children uniforms. when government collected tht money from those parents, that is when they decided to order the uniforms.
Furthermore they should have more than two location to pick up the uniforms, this is a disgrace.
If it is the case that the order for new uniforms was submitted too late for the manufacturer to produce and ship them in time for the start of the new school year, any claim that this is beyond government’s control is rubbish.
What is of more concern is how this was subsequently handled. Whoever was responsible in government must have known that not enough uniforms were going to be available until the end of September. They have drawn up a temporary dress code for September. Why not simply defer issue of any uniforms until then, advise parents accordingly and plan an efficient way to distribute them, say by allocating 2 hour periods throughout the day for each school year so that working parents can schedule their day?
Am I the only one who thinks that saving face, rather than getting it right no matter what, is being given more priority now than ever before, if only because this government keeps stumbling from one self-made crisis to another?
Not surprising as EVERYTHING is beyond Government control. Especially themselves. And their spending. And their lack of skill. And their ability to do their jobs. But not their ability to spend money they don’t have. Get ready for lots of standing in lines in the near future.
Did the UDP change the uniforms to put more emphasis on the colours blue and green?
Just asking, as my child is due to start either Red Bay or Green Bay primary school next year.
surprising from rolston…considering all the ‘long hours’ he has put in at ‘the office’ recently…….zzzzzzz
And these are the very people that are in charge of teaching Caymans youth the way to be successful in todays world. Explains a lot. Leaders lead by example and the people are following. Get used to it. When no one will give loans to pay for all the governments non workers, hardly working and premeirship perks fast forward to the food lines and the excuses you will get then. Soon come.
what is the reason for the delay.??..apart from the obvious government/civil service incompetence
That is the only reason.
This is what happens when you want to "bulldoze" everything that the former Education Minister has accomplished and put your "rubberstamp" on everything.
Careless and selfish actions by the Minister even against the advise of the school board, that caused the new uniforms being ordered late and having to charter a flight to go to Honduras to pick up the new uniforms.
Then take into account the loss of all the old uniforms, which ended up being sent to Haiti, which was a good cause but it still ended up an extremely expensive venture for the school board, just because of thoughtless and selfish actions of this Minister and more astonishingly, in this time of Economic Depression.
And the Government claims we are broke!
Difficult to come up with any actual concrete accomplishments. A lot of "love, love-me-do" big talk, certainly. And something about Cayman becoming world renowned for its education system in addition to tourism and finance? And some stunning watercolour illustrations of ficticious places of learning in expensive looking brochures. And everything was "exciting" and "new" (actually slightly altered stuff that had been done for donkey’s years – but you gotta remember, folks, this was "sexy" theatrical media-hype at full-throttle applied to our education system for the first time, and the truth couldn’t be allowed to mess things up : that would come later!). In truth, I never heard such mindless self-congratulation in all my life – always thought the curtain-call was at the end of the play, not at the beginning and throughout the performance? Speaking of new and incredibly marvellous things, anyone know what happened to that professor from England? You know, the one who was handed the country’s education system on a plate to experiment on (at our expense, of course). Seems to have disappeared for some reason.
Lack of planning.
How can this be out of Governments control? sad.
the long and short of this is they did not have the money to order them and wanted the parents to pay up front so that they could have the money to order thats why they were not ordered until the end of august
so what do you think uniforms for about 2100 children in two week (never could have happen).
THE MINSTER or the rest of the them don’t even know where they HEAD is fron they TAILS
Why? the chaos yesterday and for the last few weeks is uncalled for, I ask why, if the education department was switching to new uniforms and a new company out of El salvador owned by Caymanians" ; child labor?" why not have all this in place and make sure the uniforms were in Cayman by the end of july so that the association could do a dry run and make sure that everything was in order, why the delay.
I have to wonder when I hear the HSA get on the radio and ask parents to have patience when in line picking up the uniforms and not have name calling,that goes both ways. I were there with a friend and the attitude of some of those ladies at the tables were uncalled for, certain kind of attitudes do not belong in the open public, whether they are friends or parents, their attitude is what causes these types of behaviours. Patience must be had when dealing with the public and if you cant have or display it then get out of the kitchen.
I am sure Central Tenders reviewed and awarded the contract, and there are no kick-backs anywhere. Right?
Baines????
Anonymous???