Peter Espeut

I notice that one of the Jamaica Labour Party's (JLP) campaign ads asserts "PNP mash up education". The truth is that both parties are to blame for our failing education system. After 45 years of independence, neither party has been able to put in place a system that can teach even half of our primary school children to read properly. Neither party has committed itself to a policy that all Jamaican schoolchildren should get a full secondary education, i.e. up to grade 11. I want the JLP to explain why in the 1960s when they were designing our modern education system, they built secondary schools that to get into them, the schoolchildren had to "fail"!

When we shook off colonial rule in 1962, Jamaica had 41 'traditional' high schools; to get in you had to 'pass' the Common Entrance Examination (CEE). Near the end of the JLP's turn at bat in 1970, this number had fallen to 40. At Independence in 1962, Jamaica had eight 'senior schools', a lower-class type of secondary school whose students were not selected by the CEE. By 1970 the JLP government had renamed them 'junior secondary schools (JSS)', and had built 42 more for a total of 50. To get in to a JSS you had to fail to get a CEE place. In 1970 the JLP government had the same six technical schools it inherited in 1962. During the period, they developed a new type of secondary school called a 'comprehensive school', and there were three in 1970; you had to pass the CEE to get in to them.

Dead end

The JSS only went to Grade 10, so their students could not take the GCE to get the best jobs or to go to sixth form and university; junior secondary schools were a dead end, and to be sent there was to have failed.

I also need to remind you that there is no absolute pass mark for the CEE; the number placed in 'traditional' high schools depends on available classroom space in those schools. So, if you want to increase the number of children who can better themselves, you need to increase the number of 'traditional' high school places.

Lest you think that I have a partisan agenda, the PNP did not do much better in their time at bat. They realised the problem and added Grade 11 to junior secondary schools and renamed them 'new secondary schools', but to get in you still had to fail the CEE. The PNP needs to explain why it did not improve these schools to make them equal to 'traditional' high schools.

Confirming apartheid

What the PNP did in the 1970s was to confirm the apartheid in Jamaican education started by the JLP by having two secondary school systems, one with educational and social mobility, and the other a dead-end.

To their credit, to increase the number of high school places they put some 'traditional' high schools on a shift system as a temporary measure until they could build more; but they never did. By 1976 there were 44 'traditional' high schools (one more had closed and there was an increase of four), not because any were built: Campion, Ardenne, DeCarteret and Marymount (private church schools) became grant-aided. The number of technical schools was unchanged, and the number of comprehensive schools increased from three to five. The big increase was in the number of new secondary schools, from 50 to 71; the PNP government of the 1970s deepened educational apartheid by building more schools where to get in, the child had to fail the CEE.

Both the PNP and the JLP have a lot of explaining and apologising to do. These two parties have held back the progress of hundreds of thousands of Jamaican young people. And continue to do so.