Martin Henry

Long before there was a University College of the West Indies there was a University College (of Jamaica.). I stumbled upon this interesting fact of our educational history while rummaging through the National Library of Jamaica on quite a different matter.

Frank Cundall, the Englishman who was secretary of the Institute of Jamaica and librarian of the Institute's West India Library for some 40 years wrote a little book in 1915, "Historic Jamaica." Cundall recounts that in 1879 Law 34 was passed establishing the Jamaica High School. And in 1890 a college, called University College was opened in connection with the school.

University College ran for a dozen years before being amalgamated with the grammar school by Law 26 in 1902. University College was a tiny outfit. Cundall notes that 30 students passed through the college with four taking the London B.A. and one the M.A. "without leaving the island." Presumably the others at some stage went to the mother University of London to complete their studies.

No mention of reasons

In Cundall's account there was no mention of reasons for the end of the University College of Jamaica experiment. Perhaps the preference for studying abroad, which is still very strong today despite the multiplicity of good local universities, kept numbers too low from among the brown and white upper class who could pay for the institution to achieve viability. I am curious.

All this has come back to mind with Jamaica College again in the news, this time in a very positive light. The Gleaner on Monday ran an Earl Moxam story on new developments at JC, the successor school with a convoluted history going back to the will of Charles Drax in 1721 which made provision for a free school in St. Ann. The new developments include the establishment of an incentives scheme to reward high-performance teachers.

JC, like so many of the pedigreed grammar schools which started out serving the colonial elite, has suffered decline. There is a new man at JC. Immediate past president of the Jamaica Teachers' Association, Ruel Reid, is captain and apparently big things are afoot to turn around the institution.

With support from a U.S.-based company headed by a JC old boy, every student will have diagnostic evaluation done and a personal learning programme designed to help him through school successfully.

Teachers too are in for special differential treatment. A monetary reward scheme has been introduced, the Moxam report says, as an incentive for teachers who perform at or above a determined level. "This is definitely a performance-related scheme," the new principal and former JTA boss gushes, "in which good performance by the teachers will see them being rewarded financially."

What a transformation! One of the big issues during Ruel Reid's tenure as JTA president was the assessment of teacher performance and the establishment of a performance-based reward system. If I remember correctly, the JTA was rather cool towards the matter if not outrightly hostile to it. Many teachers, with all their testing and evaluation skills learned in college and practiced on students, couldn't figure out how their own performance assessment could be done fairly.

e-learning enterprise

White boards and multimedia projectors are replacing blackboards at a time when the Government itself has embarked upon a big e-learning enterprise.

The school board, led by businessman R. Danny Williams, is solidly behind the transformation of JC. The board is pushing a subsidized housing incentive scheme. The newly formed Jamaica College Foundation, headed by the board chairman himself, holds $45 million of commitments earmarked to finance various development projects and is ambitiously pushing for $150 million in the medium term.

It is well known that the best schools, in addition to strong leadership, enjoy strong support from partners such as the church, foundations, and their alumni. The weakening of church support for the schools they founded has been a significant factor in their decline. Out of the United States the data is impressively clear: The largely faith-run parochial schools, as they call them, routinely outperform the public schools. JC seems set to out-perform itself.

Martin Henry is a communication specialist.