MEMBER OF Parliament for South St. Andrew, Dr. Omar Davies, with the help of several agencies, is moving to take away something from many of his constituents, something he says they have been clutching to all their lives - an excuse for failure.
Some 240 residents in one of the country's most difficult constituencies have signed up for a recently launched Adult Continuing Education (ACE) programme which was projected to enrol only 60 persons. But the numbers, mostly women, are continuing to climb. The Member of Parliament has had to make a special plea for the women to bring their men into the programme so that they can progress together.
Earlier on, a literacy improvement project was launched in the primary schools of the constituency and we have reported the significant successes of that phase of the drive to improve the constituency through education. Now the focus is on the adults who have already left the formal school system. The ages of participants range from 15 to over 50.
Interestingly, it is level three of the programme which has the highest number of participants, 126 of the 240. Level three is the CXC/GCE level. Level one is the literacy level and level two is the skills training level. The numbers are indicating fair levels of basic education in this section of the inner city but a failure to follow through to examination passes and certification.
The area has several primary and secondary schools with generally lower enrolment levels and fewer students per teacher. Access is therefore not a fundamental problem and MP Davies has set out with refreshing frankness to remove the 'excuse for failure' among his constituents and to position them to take advantage of work and further study opportunities.
The teachers will be volunteer students of the University of the West Indies and the University of Technology. The Jamaica Attitudes and Values (JAMVAT) programme, which grew out of the Prime Minister's initiative to transform attitudes and values, allows tertiary level students to exchange community service for public assistance with their cost-sharing fees. ACE projects across inner-city communities would be a particularly useful and productive JAMVAT deployment and there would be the added benefit of some of the more privileged members of the society mingling and working with some of the less privileged. Large numbers of students, fired up with the ideals of service, contributed to the success of JAMAL in the 1970s.
A number of corporate sponsors are backing ACE in South St. Andrew and one of the schools in the constituency, Charlie Smith High School, is contributing the classroom space. More Members of Parliament in town and country need to follow the lead of Omar Davies and pull together the resources available for adult continuing education, including their constituents' own ambitions and capacity for progress.
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