Comprehensive high schools seek parity

WESTERN BUREAU -

The Association of Principals and Vice-principals of Comprehensive High Schools is not planning to team up with the body that represents their counterparts at the traditional high schools just yet, although come September all schools at the secondary level will fall under the same heading.

The Government has taken a decision to rename some 75 comprehensive high schools, which were formerly known as secondary schools. They will all become high schools.

Although the renaming, which is part of a larger effort to bring parity to the secondary education system, is a reality, the 20-year-old association that represents the heads of comprehensive high schools says its clamour for parity is not over.

"Now that all comprehensive high schools are going to be called high schools, some people have been saying there is no need for our association," said Alphansus Davis, president of the association. "But nothing is further from the truth. We still have a mission to accomplish."

Equal treatment

Mr. Davis, who is the principal of the Spaldings High School in Clarendon, said that his association would team up with the Jamaica Teachers Association's Committee of High School Principals eventually, but not before they were satisfied that the former comprehensive schools received equal treatment.

That committee had evolved from the older Association of Headmasters and Headmistresses which predated the JTA, the representative body for the nation's teachers.

"We have to make sure that the perception that comprehensive high schools are inferior is erased," Mr. Davis explained, "that the funding from the Government and other interested parties is the same on a per capita basis and that the resources available to the institutions are the same across the board...that the disparities are erased."

However Pamella Harrison, president of the Committee of High School Principals, said the executives of the committee would be contacting Mr. Davis as early as this week to discuss the way forward.

"We have already extended the right hand of fellowship to the association and the executives of our committee are going to meet to discuss it," she said. "We are very happy about the move to rename these schools because they have been doing very well, we are extremely excited and we are looking forward to working together as one group."

But Mr. Davis's association is not planning to relinquish its independence that easily, given the background against which it was formed.

"Our association was formed after we were denied membership to the Committee of High School Principals, simply I think, because our schools did not carry the title of high school. That's why we came together and formed our own association and we tend to be very clannish, our history is over 20 years old," he said.

In the meantime, Mr. Davis and principals of other comprehensive high schools are reporting that their students are excited about the proposed name change.

"It's a psychological thing if the children come to the schools thinking positively of themselves things will change," he said. "For example, if the child that comes here is made to feel that the child that attends Knox (an established traditional high school just across from Spaldings Comprehensive) has nothing over him as far as the institution he attends is concerned, then he will feel better about himself."

P. R.

Back to Lead Stories