The Editor, Sir:
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending a two-day conference at the Jamaica Conference Centre to celebrate the achievements of the New Horizons Project (NHP).
Coming to an end later this year, this seven-year project has touched the lives of 800 teachers and close to 30,000 students in 72 primary schools around the island.
New Horizons, a partnership between USAID, the California-based consulting firm of Juarez and Associates, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Culture and its National Council in Education, is an example of a project that has successfully transitioned into a sustainable programme.
The schools chosen as pilots were chosen on the basis of their low performance and emphasis was placed on this problem of underachievement, particularly in the areas of literacy and numeracy.
Multiple interventions followed: teacher professional development in student-centred teaching and project-based learning, nutrition, school governance and educational technology and parenting skills. Twenty of the 72 schools became professional development centres acting as a resource for sharing the project with other schools.
As a result, schools such as inner-city Kingston's St. Peter Claver now boasts that 83 per cent of their students were at the mastery level in the Grade 4 Achievement Test. St. Peter Claver also produced the top performing student in 2004's GSAT for Region One.
St. Catherine's Jericho Primary has created an adult literacy programme and become a community resource for lifelong learners. Portland's Windsor Forest saw a 21 per cent jump in student performance. These are just a few of a long list of positives achieved by the NHP.
It struck me as strange that this conference and the work of the NHP were accorded very little media coverage, barring Barbara Gloudon's piece in last Saturday's Observer.
We must give respect where respect is due. Instead of fixating on all that is wrong with the system, we should also applaud what is right. After all, sustainable transformation is built on hope, not despair.
If you had seen the colourful and clever projects that decorated the conference centre last week and listened to these primary school students clearly and enthusiastically explain their ideas, you would be hopeful that all is not lost in our education system.
You would join me in congratulating the NHP and all the partners that made this project such a success.
I am, etc.,
Dr. REBECCA TORTELLO
Barbican
