Martin HenryTO DREAM the impossible dream, sang the crisply clean, bright-eyed children in the choral group from Pembroke Hall Primary School with all their hearts. They were making their contribution to the launch of the Primary Education Support Programme on Friday morning November 1. These children are perhaps too young to really know that the majority of their cohort is not likely to realise much of even quite modest dreams as things stand.
A lot of effort and money have gone into education reform, and there have been significant improvements particularly in access. The Minister of Education pointed out, for example, that 84 per cent of the secondary age cohort are now in five-year institutions, up from 73 per cent a decade ago in 1990/91. What remains true is that the vast majority of these students will leave the secondary level, as their terminal stage of formal education, without a satisfactory general education. Only about 10 per cent of secondary graduates manage to acquire four or more CXC subjects. In English Language and Mathematics, which are academic foundations for fulfilling big dreams, even with the expansion of official pass levels to grade three, only about a half and a third, respectively, of candidates are earning passes.
Permanent Secretary, Margaret Bowie, said the Ministry was not satisfied with the literacy rate. Right up to university level, remediation in fundamentals is a necessity for too many students to limp forward. Entire sectors of the education and training system are built around second chances for under-achievers. And a substantial private industry of extra lessons offsets the failures of the state system in basics.
In another forum sometime ago, I told the Minister, to his agreement, that security and economic problems are educational issues which can and will undermine reform efforts. The Pembroke Hall Primary School group sang again in the innocence of childhood: I would never trade Jamaica if you gave the whole world to me/ Jamaica my homeland of liberty where the mountains kiss the sea/ Jamaica my only comfort. It was all too heart-rending not to cry. The hard data is that the United States, Canada, and Britain are the preferred home of the majority of Jamaican youth.
The Ministry of Education itself has come to publicly accept the obvious that the Government is training a significant number of the country's people for export. Too many at home are sentenced to a harsh life on the fringes of a hustling economy. The performers from the Melrose Primary and Junior High School celebrate Afro-Jamaican culture in dress, drumming and dance. There is so much promise and potential in the nation's children and youth. Jamaica is such a culturally rich and energetic place. So many teachers are going beyond the call of duty to foster the arts and culture and sports with their charges.
Melrose is one of those schools more directly affected by the maelstrom of urban violence. Violence, fear and death are overarching themes in Jamaican children's art, as UNICEF is telling us again. The gathering had to reconvene to hear the poem of a little one with a big voice who struggled through the rain to get there from the Jericho Primary School in St Catherine and arrived late: I am a child/ You are the teacher/Don't waste me /Teach me/ Don't abuse me/Give me praise, encouragement. Speaking with articulate power for the nation's children, she received a standing ovation.
Proceedings as usual opened with prayer. Later on the Pembroke Hall Primary School students sang: Tell the world what God has done/Say it loud/ Praise His name/For he comes to judge the earth/ In righteousness and truth/Our Lord reigns. Religion pervades Jamaican public life and our education system. Where others have pushed God out of schools and public space, Jamaica has maintained a
comfortable, non-controversial recognition of the Eternal Father. Why do we not allow our faith and prayers to give our children a brighter future?
The Primary Education Support Programme (PESP) is the third venture with the IDB for the reform of Primary education. There were PEIP I and PEIP II: The Primary Education Improve-ment Project. I have been trying to get end of project review documents to see how things have gone. The Minister stressed that PESP is building on something in place and was going for continuity. These reform projects are expensive ventures on borrowed money. PESP is to cost US$39.5 million, with $31.5 million coming from the IDB and $4 million a piece from OPEC and the Government of Jamaica. There have also been in recent times the New Horizon textbook project grant-financed by USAID, and the All-Age School Development Project financed by the British DFID.
The Ministry of Education is boasting the largest post-debt slice of the national budget, as the PIOJ officer, Lorna Palmer, reminded the audience, while chalking up additional debts to finance reforms. The IDB, through its representative, Robert Bellefeuille, is happy to continue to lend in an 18-year partnership. The PESP is the most ambitious venture to date, he said. One of the most significant out-turns of education reform has been the development of mechanisms for the quantitative assessment of system, school and student performance.
PEIP gave us the National Assessment Programme(NAP) which tracks student achievement from grade one to grade six. We can now, for example, capture literacy levels with great accuracy and confidence. ROSE allows the tracking of performance across the lower secondary grades 7-9. The Education 2000 White Paper, as PS Margaret Bowie reminded us, has set measurable, critical minimum standards across the system. In the spirit of the Education Citizens Charter, performance information should be made readily accessible to the public.
The PESP, with its three components of quality assurance, institutional development and civil works, according to its documents and Project Manager Jean Hastings in her overview, has as strategic objectives to: improve performance through the effective implementation of the revised primary school curriculum and national assessment standards in all primary schools; increase efficiency through the rationalisation of management capacity at all levels; and enhance equity in the delivery of educational services to children from lower socio-economic backgrounds who are at the margin of both equity and achievement.
I want to know how far PEIP took us and whether we got value for money, money which has to be paid back. The PESP is going to train teachers in curriculum delivery and upgrade teachers colleges lecturers. Principals are to be trained in school management. A recurring theme, which came up in the ROSE end of project review meeting and which the Minister reiterated at the PESP launch is that high performing schools have effective leaders who focus on educational output. Textbooks will be produced and libraries upgraded, as well as physical plants. A school-based preventive maintenance programme will be put in place. Little, but important, things like classroom storage cupboards will be put in. Information Technology will be expanded, and there is an exciting proposal for radio mathematics. Literacy will receive further attention and the institutional capacity to manage the system will be improved.
Martin Henry is a communications consultant.
