Facing the education crisis

THERE IS little, if anything, surprising in the educational performance of Jamaican high school students in the assessment by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Rather, the findings are in concert with the several surveys, reviews and analyses of the island’s education system over many years, including the one concluded two years ago by the Patterson Commission that made recommendations for transforming the system.

The OECD report is done as part of its Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a global initiative that evaluates the “knowledge and skills of 15-year-old students in mathematics, reading and science”, including their ability “to solve complex problems, think critically and communicate effectively”. Jamaica participated in the project for the first time in 2022.

Performance was graded from level one to six, where levels five and six are the highest tiers, and level one signifies a clear failure to meet the cut. The levels in-between signify lower grades of competency.

The assessment found that Jamaican students not only fall short in critical educational competencies, but lag behind large swathes of their global counterparts. Indeed, in the three subjects, Jamaican students scored lower than the average for the OECD, with hardly any performing at the top grades (levels five and six).

For instance, in OECD countries, an average of 69 per cent of students achieved at least a grade two in mathematics. Over 85 per cent of students in Singapore, Macao (China), Japan, Hong Kong , Taiwan and Estonia achieved that level, or higher.

STATISTICS

Only 26 per cent of Jamaican students managed the level-two benchmark or above, and almost none were in the level-five and six bracket. Put another way, nearly three-quarters (74 per cent) of Jamaican students failed to break through the lowest level of competency.

In science, 45 per cent reached the minimum level for competence – a 31 percentage points lag on the average for the OECD.

With respect to reading, half of Jamaican students gained level two or higher, compared to the OECD average of 74 per cent, meaning that these students could “at a minimum … identify the main idea in a text of moderate length, find information based on explicit though sometimes complex criteria, and can reflect on the purpose and form of texts when explicitly directed to do so”. However, only one per cent of the more than 3,000 Jamaican students who were part of the assessment attained levels five and six scores.

Looking at the ledger from its grimmer side, 50 per cent of Jamaican students did not make the minimum assessment standard of competence – level two. This, by and large, comports with domestic findings and represents the carry-over of poor performance of students from primary to high schools.

Generally, a third of Jamaican 12-year-olds each year complete their primary education illiterate, while a higher proportion is ill-prepared for high school education. Indeed, as the Patterson Commission highlighted in its analysis of the language arts results of the 2019 Primary Exit Profile test for grade-six students: “A … third of students at the end of primary school could not read, 56 per cent could not write, and 57 per cent could not identify information in a simple sentence.” The situation has improved only marginal improvements since then.

While the PISA report may not have broken significant new ground, it is useful in providing policymakers with direct comparisons of domestic education outcomes and those of other countries. Importantly, too, is its highlighting of the fact that socio-economic status, as a factor in education outcomes, may be as powerful a predictor as presumed. Or, perhaps more accurately, the difference between the performance of better-off Jamaican students and poor ones is not as wide as in other countries.

REPORT

Said the PISA report: “In Jamaica socio-economically advantaged students (the top 25 per cent in terms of socio-economic status) outperformed disadvantaged students (the bottom 25 per cent) by 45 score points in mathematics. This is smaller than the average difference between the two groups (93 score points) across OECD countries.”

Looked at differently, socio-economic status accounted for six per cent of the variation in mathematics performance in Jamaica, against 15 per cent, on average, across the OECD countries. And among the disadvantaged Jamaican students, 15 per cent were in the top quarter of mathematics performance. In OECD countries, only 10 per cent, on average, were among the top 25 per cent of mathematics performers.

Bright spots apart, this report underlines the ongoing crisis in Jamaica’s education, which amounts to a national emergency and should be so declared. Recognising that there is a problem, saying so and implementing piecemeal reform strategies is not sufficient. Neither does television jingles declaring reform without robust discussion with, and engagement of, all stakeholders cut it, when no one knows what is being reformed. The Patterson Report has not been laid in Parliament.

The crisis demands national mobilisation, led from the top, with a new and clearer declaration of the mission. That must start with primary schools resetting the basics and ensuring that children can read to the age levels. There must be no automatic promotion of children to higher grades unless they meet that criterion, for strong systems can’t be built on rickety foundations. Neither can logistic-centred economies.

It starts with reading.