ISSA ready to implement transfer quota system
A TRANSFER quota system will come into force in 2020, in time for the high-school track and field season, and the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) plans to watch it for a few years before contemplating any adjustments.
That’s the word from ISSA President Keith Wellington, who says the new system represents the will of the body, which presides over high-school sport.
Designed to counter excesses, the new system will restrict each Boys and Girls’ Athletics Championships school to two transferred student athletes in each age-group class each year.
Asked how long this system will be allowed to run before adjustments could be made, Wellington said, “We would suspect that it would be better for us to see how it works over a few seasons, few years, and then we can do a full review, but the discussions still continue of what people expect to happen and what changes they think may be required in the future.”
The old anti-recruiting rules forced athletes on the move to sit out a year of ISSA competition at their new school unless they were going into sixth form. ISSA also introduced a clearinghouse system that required documentation to ensure a full exchange of information between schools involved in a transfer.
Wellington, who is the headmaster at St Elizabeth Technical High School, says ISSA is going to see how the new system works in practice.
DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM
“We normally make firm decisions, but we also make decisions, and we appraise from time to time. We keep our eyes and ears open, so even with this particular rule, the quota system, we are aware that even some of our member schools have an opinion that is different from the majority, but we are a democratic organisation, and the will of the majority is what dictates what happens,” Wellington said.
When the changes were announced last year, Dr Rachael Irving, research fellow at The
University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, advised ISSA to wait before implementing them.
Based on the findings of a 2016 UWI research project, she recommended that schools with modest track and field programmes first be strengthened before the regulations come into force. Failing that, Irving projected, Jamaica will lose its edge in global sprinting and youngsters will lose scholarship opportunities.
“Only six per cent of those who run at the elite junior level transition to the senior level,” Irving explained. “Most of those who transition are from the athletic schools. As a matter of fact, looking at the data, about 0.05 per cent of those from the schools that aren’t equipped transition.”