We are excited that Ruel Reid, the new headmaster at Jamaica College (JC), is apparently excited by the performance-related incentive system that he, no doubt with the prodding of the school's governors, is helping to implement at JC.

We are only sorry that Mr. Reid, when he recently held the post of president of the Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA), the teachers' union, was not, or never appeared to be, a proponent of performance-based pay for teachers. Or, if he was, was not openly enthusiastic about it; perhaps because he felt it necessary to play to the wishes of his constituency.

But, as the saying goes, better late than never. And now that he is so openly on board, Mr. Reid, with this experiment, has a great opportunity to help reshape the way teachers are compensated, by, in part, paying for outcomes, thereby helping to lift standards in the school system.

It makes sense that Mr. Reid and the chairman of his governors, R. Danny Williams, would want to do this at JC, which used to be one of Jamaica's leading high schools and the alma mater of some of the country's most outstanding figures. But in recent years Jamaica College, despite a seeming halt of the slide, found itself on the skids. Discipline was in disarray and academic performance less than stellar.

Indeed in their 2004 study of the four-year performance (2001-2004) of Jamaican high schools, based on their performance in the region's secondary exams and a range of associated variables, A-Quest's Dr. Dennis Minott and his researchers placed Jamaica College at 39th among all schools. Its performance rating was C-minus. In fact, at A'levels and CAPE, JC did not hit the scales.

Mr. Reid and Mr. Williams hope that providing rewards to teachers who perform their duties well, such as actually turning up to work consistently, preparing lesson plans on time and improving the quality of these plans, they will influence the performance of students in exams. Teachers will have added incentives to look forward to in delivering a benchmark number of passes.

It is a system that should be in place not only at JC, but in all state-paid and state-subsidised schools as part of the terms of contract of teachers; a point we have made in the past and only recently when teachers were threatening to strike during their salary dispute with the Government.

Indeed, it makes little sense to continue to provide across-the-board salary increases to teachers and for them consistently to demand substantial hikes without the rewards being matched by benchmarked performance. At the time in September, when teachers were threatening to stay away from classes, the returning passes in CXC math was at not much over 40 per cent of the Jamaican students who sat the exam, while at English language, the pass rate was below 60 per cent.

Yet the JTA has consistently resisted performance-based pay, throwing up a rampart of difficulties, citing the socio-economic mix of students in particular schools and communities. Some of the difficulties are, indeed, real, but cannot be beyond the ingenuity of administrators and thinkers to surmount.

What has been lacking, on the part of the JTA and the education ministry, is the will, preferring to accept the lowest common denominator than accepting hard challenges.

Today's circumstances do not provide our country the luxury of operating with an undereducated workforce, unless we wish to stay near the bottom of the pile and consistently rated below par on the human development index.

Jamaica College is beginning to provide a model, apparently to be subsidised from internal resources, which the state should study for possible emulation.