A coup in education
I WAS more than a little disappointed at some of the comments l odged on the Gleaner’s website to my column last week, when I criticised the Holness Government for failing to consult with the owners of high schools before announcing the compulsory sixth form (grades 12-13) for all students. One commentator wrote, “Church-owned schools cannot continue to accept government money and want to do as they please with no oversight or instructions from MOE”.
This charge is unfair; all church schools welcome the oversight of the government funds they receive; but church schools are not owned or operated by the Government, and possess a level of autonomy codified in law.
Jamaica’s primary, secondary and tertiary school system was pioneered by churches ( and private trusts) who were interested in the education of their members, and the welfare of those who had been slaves; only recently has the Government entered the business of establishing schools, but, generally speaking, of a much lower quality.
At Independence, Jamaica had 41 high schools, only five of which were owned and operated by the Government; 28 were church schools and eight were trust schools. Wanting to increase the numbers attending high school (especially from lower socioeconomic groups), beginning in the 1930s, the colonial government entered into education partnership arrangements with churches and trusts: the Government would pay the teachers and provide a perstudent subvention, and in return would choose 95 per cent of the student intake (later determined by performance in the Common Entrance Examination introduced in 1958). The owners of the schools would nominate the majority of the school board members (including the chairman) and the Government would appoint them; the school boards would hire teachers and principals, and the Government would appoint them and pay them; owners did not have the right to appoint board members or teachers, and the Government did not have the right to nominate.
EDUCATION APARTHEID
Just after Independence, the government of the day borrowed big money from the World Bank to build government secondary schools; but instead of building top-quality high schools for children to enter through the Common Entrance Examination (CEE), they built about 80 junior secondary schools, for children who failed to perform well in the CEE – deepening the apartheid in education.
I suppose what the government of the day was doing was to ensure that there would be sufficient unskilled labour to continue to cut cane and weed bananas. Even after Independence, Jamaica was still a plantation society.
If they had built 80 top-class high schools in town and country, turning out scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs, where would Jamaica be today? We would have a much larger middle class (like our Caribbean neighbours) and much less crime. Jamaica is still suffering from this backward decision of the Jamaica Labour Party government of the 1960s.
Government schools cannot do what church schools have been doing, because the ethos of church schools is somewhat different to the ethos of government-owned and -operated schools; besides providing secular academic knowledge (chemistry, history, mathematics, English, etc.), the Church has a wider agenda. The denomination of which I am a member has a mandate to form character, to develop all the facets of the whole person (physical, intellectual, social, cultural, moral, spiritual). The curriculum of church schools, therefore, requires additional resources for implementation. This is what makes church schools special, and why even secular, anti-religious people want to send their children to church schools.
PERFORMANCE DATA
And the performance data speaks for itself: no governmentowned entity ranks in the top 10 high schools, and there is only one (founded in 1935) in the top 30. Jamaica’s best schools are operated by churches and trusts, with some funding from the Government. According to the partnership agreement, the Government covers part of the cost of delivering the total curriculum, and the church schools find the rest, either by asking parents for contributions or by fundraising.
My column in this newspaper on March 2, 2018 was titled , ‘And there arose a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph’. It began: “A coup is under way. Not a coup against the state, but a coup by the state – to take over schools presently owned and operated by churches and trusts in partnership with the government.”
I am willing to concede that this present Jamaican Government may not be fully aware of the terms of the partnership arrangement between the Church and the State in education, made many decades ago. This arrangement between churches and trusts on the one hand, and government on the other, cannot be varied unilaterally by either party; it requires dialogue and renegotiation.
This present Government has breached the agreement several times in the last few years by acting unilaterally, and the announcement of the compulsory Sixth Form Pathways Programme without consulting the owners of the schools seems to be the latest attempt at a not-too-subtle coup to take over the schools operated by the churches and trusts.
If it can be proven in court that the Government has breached the partnership agreement, I wonder what redress the churches can claim?
And in any case, under these circumstances, I wonder whether the partnership arrangement between the churches and the Government in education has a future?