The Editor, Sir:

Esther Tyson's article in The Sunday Gleaner of May 18, titled 'Unfair School Comparisons', has made clear a major point that many teachers have been making for years. The Timar Johnson story shows that the good student with parental support will do well at any school.

During my 20 years at Manchester High School, I met students of that calibre every year, from schools like Black River High, Maggoty, Christiana High, Winston Jones and Spaldings Secondary, who came into the sixth-form programme with results that indicate that they managed to outperform the majority of students from any of the so-called top schools in the island. Yet, the system continues to convince parents that, somehow, sending their children to these schools is to condemn them to an inferior quality of education.

Built reputations

The fact is that the traditional high schools did not come on stream with any superior mode of instruction or method of pedagogy. They came at first, back in the 1950s and before, with their entrance examinations which they used to screen out the weaker students. Students who entered and failed to maintain a certain average were unceremoniously asked to leave.

The English translation of Cornwall College's motto "Disce aut discede" sums it up simply, 'Learn or leave'. Of course, they got good results and built their reputations. Consequently, the demand for entry into them increased and their reputations have been enhanced by the silly method by which we continue to place students in our high schools.

Under this system, the brighter children get their first choice, regardless of where they live with respect to the location of the chosen schools. Hence, a few schools get the brightest children from all over the island and have managed to build a very comfortable zone in which their good pass rates are almost guaranteed from the seventh grade.

Idiotic notion

Nothing would be wrong with this if these brighter students were doing some special accelerated programme at these schools, as is the case with the Magnet schools in parts of the United States. But for the most part, they are doing the same eight subjects that are offered at schools in their own neighbourhood or parish.

The only purpose that this serves is to keep the weaker students out of the traditional high schools, in the areas where they live, protect the reputations of these schools, and make it harder for the weaker child to get an education.

The 'CSEC Derby' rankings which have been done by Messrs Ralph Thompson and Bill Johnson, in conjunction with this newspaper, serve only to promote the idiotic notion that you improve your school when you avoid weaker students. The problems in our schools hardly originate with the type of student who scores in the 1980s and 1990s at the GSAT level.

I am, etc.,

R. HOWARD THOMPSON

Waltham, Mandeville.

Via Go-Jamaica

Correction

In the first paragraph of yesterday’s Letter of the Day the reference should have been to the Timar Jackson story, not Johnson, as stated in error; and in the final paragraph the sentence should have ended “... .the type of student who scores in the eighties and nineties at the GSAT level.” i.e. figures not years as printed. We apologise for the errors.