The Editor, Sir:

IN HIS Letter of the Day, R.H. Alexander continues to promote the myth that there is this vast gap among our high schools. He begins by making the excellent point that children who come into the high schools already prepared are ahead of others less prepared. However, he goes on to make the assumption that the results at schools like Campion are due to some superior method of pedagogy. If this were so, we would have all heard about such methods long ago and applied them to other schools.

The fact that nobody seems to want to admit is that schools like Campion have built their reputation on a policy of rigid screening. I have spent most of my 30 years in the classroom at Manchester High School, which takes in a wide range of students. Every year, the school produces a number of students who outperform the majority of students at Campion while at the same time there will be a few students who fail to pass any subjects. The same can be said of many other schools of less reputation.

One has only to look at the wide range of schools represented at the CSEC awards ceremony each year to realise that when most schools get bright children they get the same results from them that Campion gets. The A streams in many schools get the same sort of resultsthat Campion gets, and the A streams will consistently outperform the B and C streams in the same school with the same teachers. The difference at Campion is that the teachers there have been allowed to avoid the problems involved in teaching weaker students.

I agree with the Jamaica Labour Party policy of free education on one condition. They must include the policy which had been in their 2002 manifesto whereby the schools would be zoned and the process begun whereby students are given choices of schools based on where they live. What we have now is an archway system, in which the brightest students are sent to what is perceived to be the better schools to do the same subjects that are available at schools in their own neighbourhood. If these schools are in fact so wonderful, they should be given the weaker children to work with.

The truth is that there is no Campion method of teaching math or Immaculate method of teaching English. These schools have deliberately avoided weaker students to maintain a high pass rate. It is clear that they do not hold that 'every child can learn, every child must learn'. The only purpose they serve is to score points on Dr. Ralph Thompson's idiotic report every year.

I am, etc.,

R. HOWARD THOMPSON

roianne@hotmail.com

Rockton, Waltham

Mandeville

Via Go-Jamaica