‘Samfy-ing’ ourselves
LAST WEEK, an international comparison of education efficiency punctured the public relations jag that we are being fed in place of substantial change. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report should arrest the consciences of those of us who will not confront the sinful academic limitations which afflict our 15-year-olds.
The study offers embarrassing comparables of the trends (sic) already described, but largely ignored, in the Patterson Report of 2021. Jamaican children are underperforming! Why? I believe it is morally wrong for those of us entrusted with the responsibility of state power, school governance, church influence and family leadership to continue to under-respond to the sabotage of the Godgiven potential of young persons.
Jamaican children are no less bright than those in Singapore or Japan, with whom we are being compared by PISA. So, why are so many consigned to be less cared underachievers, who are nonetheless obliged to compete on international standards? We are doing this to ourselves. Patterson, and before him Rae Davies, told us what we need to change.
OVERHAUL THE SYSTEM
The upcoming budget must deviate from the customary headings.The primary surplus needs to be spent on the overhaul of the early childhood and primary sectors, which is where the deficiencies of the PISA-tested grade 10 kids started.
STEM, robotics, coding and AI can follow, not precede, conquest of illiteracy, innumeracy and social maladjustment. Foundation has to come before superstructure. Touting a few score schools for special attention doesn’t cut it. Systemic problems demand comprehensive responses. The minister’s hands are manacled by systemic handcuffs.
Bellyaching about skilled labour shortages and endemic crime and violence are so much idle talk unless we mobilise ourselves to first aspire, then invest and achieve at least a 25 place improvement on the PISA scale by 2030.
POLITICAL WILL
Neither political tendency can lead this by themselves, no matter how many seats you control in Gordon House or municipal capitals. We have been trying to pass a simple Teaching Council Bill and revisions of the Education Act and Regulations for 20 years and counting. The embedded inefficiencies in the system - to do with teachers’ contracts, diminished partnerships with churches, trusts and private providers, resource allocation and curriculum realignment require combined corrective effort. If we don’t have a sturdy national movement, transcending party lines and attractive to the turnedoff and uncommitted majority, institutional change and a surge in individual outcomes will be puny or non-existent.
BEFORE YOU VOTE
As you go to cast a vote in the forthcoming elections or, more likely, make a decision about migration, ask how the now-forgotten five per cent annual growth target is going to be achieved unless the education gap is remedied. Right now, we are spending massive dollars on education and training, which earn low dividends yet we call it prosperity. We are ‘samfy-ing’ ourselves.
EVALUATING TEACHERS?
In this space last Friday, Peter Espeut advocated evaluating teachers so as to improve instruction. That is not possible, as arrangements are structured in Jamaica. Every year, peer evaluators of our teachers rate the vast majority as excellent performers, with the small remainder accorded ‘satisfactory’ status. Though not entirely the consequence of teacher shortcomings, student outcomes tell a different story.
Under the 1980 Code of Regulations, a teacher whose appointment is confirmed after a brief probationary period is tenured until retirement, voluntary transfer or resignation. Only egregious personal misconduct, largely unrelated to competence or performance, can lead to employment loss. Evaluation is thus blunted by job permanence. This expensive rigidity is untouched in the reform of the code now being considered. Once again, as I found out, no one political administration will be able to broker the necessary radical reform, especially given the ever-widening avenues of migration open to teachers.
FRAGILE PARTNERSHIP
Archbishop Howard Gregory is right. The ownership, influence and internal control by churches and trusts in more than a third of public-supported schools (and a much higher proportion of early childhood institutions) must not be diminished by the state, as is the present tendency. The reform proposals for the Education Act and Code of Regulations explicitly propose the extension of ministerial control over church and trust institutions, with only a perfunctory genuflection to the partnership which has done what no government, colonial or independent, could have achieved on its own.
Please note the delicious irony that all of us in political administration and the educational bureaucracy insist that our children secure places in the very church and trust schools which over-reaching state control and denial of adequate funding will undermine. ‘Self-samfy’ again.
WHAT WILL IT TAKE?
I am hoping and expecting that there will be greater and more targeted spending in education and training (and especially a substantial repurposing of how we spend the big HEART tax money) in the upcoming budget. That is if we really want to reverse the PISA embarrassment and the sin being committed against our children.
But, more money will not be enough. The pre-eminent national cause must be to preserve, cherish and uplift the talents and capacities of our people. This will demand political comity, respect for institutions with proven achievements, all within a context of thorough-going change and truthtelling about targets and outcomes.
The magnitude and crucialness of this enterprise is the reason for my disquiet about the dysfunction of our political culture and cruel social stratification. Where is the leadership for family and educational transformation to be found? Where is it being cultured?
Local government must be about every pickney going to school every day with enough to eat; parents paying their fair share of costs and supporting dedicated and competent teachers in reasonably appointed school facilities. What should matter more to the councillors?
Heed the anguish of the grandmother of the little boy who drowned last week who wailed that his end was caused by his unrequited“longing for love ”. Highquality schooling and character formation are tangible expressions of love.
We could change swiftly if we only stopped ‘samfy-ing’ ourselves.