Education Minister, Maxine Henry-Wilson. - Norman Grindley /Staff Photographer JAMAICANS ARE divided over whether or not students who perform well in the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) should be spread throughout the school system rather than bunching them into select schools.
This was one of the findings of a poll conducted on behalf of The Gleaner Company by pollster Don Anderson and his team of researchers from Market Research Services Limited. It was conducted between Septem-ber 15 and 24 and involved 1,000 interviews with persons 18 years and over across the island's 14 parishes.
GSAT DEBATE
Since the GSAT replaced the Common Entrance Examination nearly five years ago as the method used to place students leaving primary/prep schools, there has been much debate as to whether the move had in fact created a system where the best students were deliberately placed in the best schools, creating an elite system in the process.
Education Minister Maxine Henry-Wilson, at a Gleaner's Editors' Forum in August, again rekindled the debate. According to her, there was now an urgent need to address the inequities in the education system under which the best performing students were being sent to elite schools.
"The practice of bunching children who do well on their GSAT into schools considered elite institutions will eventually harm the country's education system," she told Gleaner editors.
BEST SCHOOLS
OR BEST CHILDREN?
The Minister said then: "One of the things that I did was to get a report of the GSAT scores which painted a telling picture. I know we boast of schools that get 10 O'Levels all the time and get all the scholarships. The question we have to ask ourselves is whether they are really the best schools or do they get the best students. The initial response must be that they get the best children."
The Gleaner-Don Anderson poll found that 55 per cent of those polled favoured a system where top-scoring students are spread through the secondary school system, "as they can assist in raising the standards of other students around them."
But this view was countered by 40 per cent who strongly supported the concentration of top students in a few select schools. "This division of views is in fact an indication of the polarity of the positions on the issues and a clear recognition that the issue is not a cut and dry one," said pollster Don Anderson in his analysis.
