Peter Espeut IN A story by Earl Moxam in last Sunday's Gleaner, it is reported that the Ministry of Education is developing a programme to cluster schools into groups for the purpose of having common services delivered, for example plant management. This is a new idea, and needs to be examined. Talk of clustering schools has been going on for years, but with a view to having one school board for a cluster of schools, which is a profoundly bad idea. The Regulations under the Education Act require school boards (each of which now manages only one school) to meet at least once each term. I have never found it possible to conduct the business of managing a school in three meetings every twelve months.
I first was appointed to a school board in the 1970s, and have been a school board chairman now for almost 15 years. In fact, a few years ago I was pleased to accept, on behalf of the Board, an honour from the Ministry of Education naming us as one of the best school boards in Jamaica. We meet for half-a-day at least twice each term - once to deal with the Principal's Report for the previous term and with current matters, and the other to deal with the financial report. With minimum six meetings each year we never have enough time. Which is why the suggestion to have each school board manage a cluster of two or three or more schools at the same time is ludicrous!
ELEMENTS
It is well known that there are elements in the education system that have no use for school boards, and would wish to see schools run entirely by principals taking instructions only from the Ministry of Education. If some had their way, board chairmen would be reduced to signing appointment forms, and forms for various kinds of leave. In fact, I suggest that many schools in Jamaica are already run that way. Principals regularly usurp the role of school boards by hiring teachers and promising study and vacation leave to teachers which are prerogatives of the Board. They are happy for the Boards to be in the background - except when there is a problem, and then the School Board is blamed.
The suggestion of cluster school boards was a plan to further marginalize school boards, and to concentrate power in the hands of the principal. To serve on a school board is voluntary service, but I hear that there are some school boards which never meet, or which meet for what is really a social occasion; no policy direction is provided, and no oversight of school management - academic or financial - is conducted. People should not accept voluntary appointments if they are not prepared to do the work. The solution is to identify these non-performing boards and to replace them, not to make matters worse by doubling or tripling the responsibilities of the voluntary boards that do work.
NATURAL DEATH
I hope that this cluster board idea has died a natural death. What is mentioned in the Sunday Gleaner story is quite different. The schools will retain their individual school boards, but clusters of schools will be provided with needed services. This makes a lot of sense. Indeed, this is what the regional offices do for large groups of schools clustered by parishes. Plant management has been mentioned as one of the needed services; I am sure that maintenance services is what is really meant, for I fail to see how management of the school plant could be taken out of the hands of the school board and the principal. It is the school managers who will need to call for maintenance services when they are needed, but it would be nice if there was a professional who would regularly tour the schools to spot problems before they arise, and to do preventative maintenance.
Another even more important need especially of rural primary, all-age and junior high schools is for accounting services. So many bursars (where they exist) cannot prepare a proper income and expenditure statement (or a profit and loss statement for the tuck shop) to save their lives (the low salaries offered by the Ministry do not allow a high enough level of person to be hired); the Ministry has opened the school system to fraud by unscrupulous persons which may never be detected. Clusters of schools would be well served with professional accounting services available to them, not just for audits but for financial management; but the accountants must be accountable to the principal and the school board.
MECHANISM TO CONSULT
The Ministry of Education needs to take school boards seriously, and must find a mechanism to consult with school boards on policy matters (with no principals present), not just lecture to the chairmen every couple of years; principals and teachers have their own consultative mechanisms. Despite my many requests, the Ministry corresponds with me through the school rather than directly. No school board is required to submit an Annual Report to the Ministry, or to account for its stewardship. The system is designed for low performance, and is running as it was designed to run. The teachers are well looked after, and the students languish.
A complete overhaul of the country's education system is required, to emphasise performance. Parents who neither pay school fees nor apply for cost-sharing, place unnecessary stress on the schools and should not get away with it. Conscientious teachers should want to be paid in accordance with the quality of their performance; their incomes will increase! School Boards need training in more than just how to fire teachers. Voluntarism remains alive in the education sector, but is largely ignored and bypassed. Rather than marginalizing school boards (which is what the principals and teachers want) the Ministry of Education needs to draw them more closely into the process of educational reform. They are the only segment without anything personal to gain, a tremendous resource and the most objective ally in this most sacred duty to form and shape the adults of the Jamaica of tomorrow.
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and is executive director of an environment and development NGO.
