Martin Henry SOME GOOD news from South St. Andrew. South St. Andrew is the constituency of the Finance and Planning Minister, Dr. Omar Davies, who is facing some rather difficult times with the national treasury. St. Andrew South is one of the really difficult patches of Jamaica in many ways.
But like everywhere else, this inner-city area has bright, ambitious children who have big dreams and want to get on in life. And like many other places, many of these children have not been learning to read and write.
A few years ago Doc. got into the picture when standard literacy tests confirmed the scope of the problem in the primary schools of the area. The Government isn't doing everything wrong. When the National Assessment Programme which is much more than the Grade Six Achievement Test was introduced a few years ago, the primary education system got a set of diagnostic tools for monitoring student achievement and taking corrective action early.
The Grade One entering Diagnostic Test provides vital information on learning readiness for primary school. The Grade Four Literacy Test provides a mid-point assessment of the vital reading and writing skills. In just a few years the GSAT has boiled down in public perception to being just another dreadful placement exam into secondary education. But, as its name suggests, it was intended to be a real, comprehensive assessment of achievement over the six years of primary education and a diagnostic platform for the start of secondary education.
Well, the literacy tests were picking up too many non-readers and poor readers in the schools of Southern St. Andrew. So school leadership and political leadership did there what should be done all across the nation. They devised and introduced a programme, The South St. Andrew Constituency Primary School Reading Project, to teach the children how to read before they got out of the primary system.
GOOD NEWS
The Gleaner carried a delightful front page, good news story a couple of weeks ago "'Now we can read'". Some 2,500 primary school students in the constituency are involved in the project and the report carried the stories of a couple of bright eyed future banker and doctor or teacher at the Iris Gelly school who have come into the light. The programme is to be extended to adults and to the basic school level.
Years ago, in the distant past of 16 years of writing, I wrote a column which I titled 'First, teach them to read'. The good news out of South St. Andrew drives home the point. The business of the primary school is to teach children to read and write. It has failed miserably if it does not. Drop everything else and teach them to read and write. As the successes in one of the more difficult patches of Jamaica are showing, it is not difficult, it is not expensive. It can be done.
Also, redemption should come at the point of failure not further up the system where it is more difficult and more expensive and less effective. These children have been fixed up and straightened out before they exit the primary level. Many have caught up and done well enough in the GSAT to go on to traditional high schools, a proud principal told The Gleaner.
But non-readers and poor readers are flooding into the secondary system and passing through it. So they come; so they go. It is a travesty. Those youngsters must be stopped in their tracks and be made literate early in their secondary education. Will a constituency somewhere please model this enlightened response?
On a recent educational tour to Cuba, I learned that the country had declared itself an illiteracy-free zone in 1963, only four years after the Revolution. JAMAL is being kept in business in perpetuity here as the school system keeps on generating a steady stream of illiterates.
CASH CRUNCH
The secondary schools are short of all kinds of resources and are facing a cash crunch from the breakdown of the cost-sharing system. But they should see the primary schools! Literacy education must not be made a big resource issue. Flushing illiteracy out of the system just has to become an educational priority. Performance in everything else can only improve as more and more children are brought into the light and become really independent self-directed learners.
Politicians are famous for building schools, some of these edifices of the same type, a stone's throw from each other as monuments to the rivalry. Seldom does political leadership take a hands-on interest in the process of education itself in their constituency. How many MPs have ever looked at publicly available test scores on national standard tests or exam results? There is a clearly visible line between interest and support and interference and we are not suggesting any crossing.
Doc. in South St. Andrew has modelled an approach to engagement which is generating some really interesting results. School administrators and teachers are on board. The community is on board. And there has been some private sector support. Stats are nice, but those 100-watt smiles of 'now we can read' Lemoya Bloomfield and Chanieka Graham on the front page tell a better story.
Martin Henry is a communication specialist.
