A crisis in education
published: Sunday | January 23, 2005

Delano Seiveright, Contributor

THE ABYSMAL state of our education system was certainly a feature of 2004.

It became clear to all Jamaicans last year that the education system was mired in crisis.

It is important to note that it is generally the children of the poor who are undermined intellectually at the early childhood education level.

This is largely attributable to the fact that many parents are unable to send students to the few excellent infant schools due to either cost or location. The rural and urban poor are therefore, impacted negatively. The government has acknowledged the problems at this level, but they continue to move at a snail's pace to put corrective measures in place.

The crisis in early childhood education is then reflected at the primary education level and continues into the secondary school system. Secondary schools have, therefore, been receiving thousands of barely literate pupils.

SECONDARY SCHOOL CRISIS

The crisis in the secondary school system is further exacerbated by the poor performance of quite a number of traditional high schools.

These traditional high schools tend to enrol the better performing students. It is important to note that more than half of non-traditional secondary school students were deemed ineligible to sit the CXC exams; this is in excess of 17,000 students. A similar situation exists in several traditional secondary schools.

Veteran educator Dr. Ralph Thompson's analysis of the 2004 CXC results in Jamaica left many in dismay. One of the highlights was that only a few traditional high schools were performing exceptionally well. The remaining traditional and all the
non-traditional secondary schools are performing poorly.

The former leader of the Jamaica Labour Party, Edward Seaga, has stated on several occasions that 70 per cent of high school leavers are without a single CXC subject.

He has also stated that 75 per cent of students in the secondary school system leave with no certificate at all and no skill for any work programme. The abysmal CXC results also limit the number of students able to access tertiary education.

FINDING SOLUTIONS

Many solutions have been posited. The most comprehensive solution so far has been put forward by the government's task force on education report. The cost to implement the proposals in the report is more than $521.4 billion over 10 years, approximately $52 billion per year. However, this cost, in the current state of the economy, is impossible to meet and thus impractical.

A more pragmatic and fairly far-reaching solution was brokered in a bi-partisan (Jamaica Labour Party/People's National Party) accord on education encapsulated in a resolution passed in Gordon House in October 2003.

The resolution committed the covernment to several things along with the following:

Increase to 15 per cent over five years, the budgetary allocation to education, moving up by an incremental one per cent per year over the five years.

A programme to renovate, rebuild and equip basic schools.

The provision of a comprehensive textbook lending programme for primary schools.

To work with schools to provide a compulsory homework or literacy hour after classes.

The reduction of the teacher-student ratio to 1:25 at the primary school level.

The government takeover of a significant number of basic schools (1,800 in number) through the provision of funding and the appointment of at least one trained teacher, in the first instance.

The government has, however, only moved the education budget allocation from 9.05 per cent to 9.21 per cent of budget. The proposals were not impossible to achieve in any way and is by far much more pragmatic than the report of the government's task force on education.

HONOUR RESOLUTION

In conclusion, it is a known fact that an educated country is a prosperous country and an uneducated country, a poor country.

Through the use of this medium, the Mona Campus Youth League would like to implore the Jamaican government immediately to honour the 2003 bipartisan parliamentary resolution on education and where possible and practicable, to revamp Jamaica's education system.

It is our belief that education should be the number one priority of all Jamaicans in the year 2005 and pressure must be exerted by all, including university students, to ensure that the government treats education as an overarching priority.

Delano Seiveright is general secretary of the Mona Campus Youth League, the University of the West Indies, Mona, students arm of Generation 2000.