THE EDITOR, Sir:
EDUCATION REFORM should be a central focus for the Jamaican government over the next ten or so years, education must be made to play a central role.
Fundamentally, the government must abolish the two education systems that still continue to exist in Jamaica. We cannot continue to have, for instance, students attending Tivoli High School exposed to an education of an inferior quality than that to which students attending Calabar High School are exposed.
The basis of such a reform should ensure that the same curriculum, the same resources, and equally qualified teachers are placed throughout the system before we can expect to have all our primary and secondary schools on a similar academic level. The mere renaming of secondary and comprehensive high schools to high schools cannot earn us the desired results.
A related part of this reform process should entail the scrapping of the GSAT. Such a life-altering experience can be way too traumatic for an 11 or 12-year-old child. Further, it cannot be reasonable for a student attending a primary school of an inferior academic offering to be expected, without outside assistance of some form, to do well on the GSAT so as to make it to a "top class" or traditional high school.
The government should implement a National High School Proficiency Test (NHSPT) to be given to final year high school students.
I am, etc.,
KKO SANGSTER
sangstek@msn.com
PA, USA
Via Go-Jamaica
