WE ARE sympathetic to Edward Seaga's suggestion that teachers who work in "hardship areas," by which we suppose he means tough inner-city communities, should get special pay.

Indeed, the concept of hardship allowances is not unknown in other professions, and is usually afforded to people who have to work in especially dangerous areas. We expect that a credible case can be made for those Jamaican communities with high levels of violence and with classes frequently disrupted by gun violence. Fear is a constant in these communities and the accompanying stress impacts on the performance of those who live and work in them, including teachers.

Mr. Seaga characterises students who go to school in these circumstances as "the almost untrainable," who still have to be moulded by teachers. In that regard these teachers "deserve special compensation".

While we broadly agree with Mr. Seaga, who has over a long period advocated innovative approaches to the problems of education in Jamaica, we would suggest that his proposed 'hardship pay' should not stand on its own. Its introduction should provide an opportunity for the implementation of a broader performance-based remuneration for teachers at all levels of the system. We do not want to pay more just for turning up for classes in one community, as opposed to the other. It is difficult to make such a case for one set of workers being paid from the public purse, and not another.

The teachers' union, the Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA), pays, or used to pay, lip service to the idea of performance-based pay but found all manner of reasons why it was impracticable. Our assumption was that the JTA and its members don't want to link salaries to outcomes. We have seen nothing in recent times to change that view.

We continue to insist that it can't be beyond experts in the education system to devise reasonable tests for performance. These could include, if necessary, weighting outcomes against inputs, such as the literacy and numeracy grades of students and the per capita expenditure on a specific school or class of schools.

Action is urgent all-round if Jamaica is to address the serious problems in education, and our country is to be in a position to compete in the global environment. For the country won't be viable if a third of our students leave primary level illiterate and over half of the secondary students fail their math exams.

Paul Wolfowitz

It now appears that Paul Wolfowitz's place as president of the World Bank has grown untenable.

It is emerging that a report that a special panel set up by the bank's board has determined that Mr. Wolfowitz broke bank rules in arranging a promotion and increased salaries for his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, when he joined the bank in 2005. Ms. Riza was at the time seconded to the U.S. State Department to avoid apparent conflict of interest.

Such an action weakened Mr. Wolfowitz's capacity to pursue the anti-corruption agenda on which he staked his presidency. Preaching against third world borrowers who use funds to their private ends, in the circumstance, sounds hollow.

We had expected that Mr. Wolfowitz might have been able to tough it out, but this report plus the resignation of a key adviser have undermined this position.