Retired chief education officer honoured
RETIRED chief education officer in the Ministry of Education, Adelle Brown, was recently lauded by her colleagues as an exemplary civil servant, who created many firsts in the education system and paved the way for others to excel.
She was recognised for her contribution in developing many of the curricula and texts currently being used by students in primary and secondary-level schools during a dinner in her honour at the Terra Nova Hotel in St Andrew last Thursday.
Minister of State Noel Monteith, in a citation to Brown, recalled her rise through the education system as a teacher, education officer, curriculum developer and administrator.
A graduate of Shortwood Teachers’ College and the University of the West Indies, Adelle Brown also holds a Master of Science degree from Florida State University.
Having joined the Education Officer corps in 1981, she held the positions of senior education officer, assistant chief education officer, deputy education officer before becoming Jamaica’s first female chief education officer in 2003.
“Adelle Brown has built a legacy of excellence that will guide and inspire others to greater success”, Monteith said.
Among the programmes and policies Brown was instrumental in implementing were the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) social studies programme, the Secondary Enhancement Programme, and literacy invention programmes for grades one and seven, language education, numeracy and textbook programmes, training of principals and education officers under the Reform of Secondary Education (ROSE) project, and the rationalisation of teachers’ colleges.
Guest speaker Sydney Bartley, director of Culture in the Ministry of Tourism, Education and Culture and a long-time colleague of Brown, noted that the achievements of the former chief education officer and other outstanding Jamaicans should not be taken for granted.
“We sometimes dwarf our own images and the images of the people around us because we walk the same corridors…we are not aware of the light they shine or the torch they bear”, Bartley said.
He had the audience laughing when he recounted a number of run-ins and arguments he had with the retired chief education officer.
“What a woman feisty!” he remarked, adding that it was “the kind of feistiness that bears no malice.”