JTA jubilee reset

THE JAMAICA Teachers’ Association (JTA) should not waste the opportunity to use its diamond jubilee, the celebration of which its president, Leighton Johnson, launched last week, to assert its place as a thinking institution in the vanguard of transforming the island’s woefully underperforming education system.

In this regard, it is not enough that there are chestthumping declarations about past achievements – including of the JTA’s advocacy of the interests of teachers – or sweeping identification of the problems facing the sector, which Mr Johnson did with panache at last week’s event. The association, as a professional body, must offer workable solutions grounded in empirical analyses, as well as deeply engage critical stakeholders on the issues.

In other words, this newspaper calls for the JTA to transform itself into the institution that it urged it to become at the start of Mr Johnson’s tenure – and of those of most of his recent predecessors. Much time has slipped by since then, but Mr Johnson still has nearly half a year, and the perfect circumstance in the JTA’s 60th anniversary, to aggressively set the organisation on that course.

There is little doubt that the JTA is an important, successful and powerful organisation. Formally launched in April 1964 with the amalgamation of six teachers’ groups, it is now the trade union for over 26,000 teachers, which gives it political clout. Through a series of subsidiary institutions, including a credit union, it also provides a wide range of social and financial services to its members.

In his remarks at the launch of the anniversary celebrations, Mr Johnson highlighted the JTA’s role “in the vanguard” of the “education landscape”, and insisted that its contribution was positive.

PERFORMANCE

The Gleaner will not, at this time, engage in a full-bore analysis of the JTA’s performance, or seek to apportion praise or blame for the performance of the education sector, which, include the following:

• A third, or more, of Jamaican grade-six students end their primary education unable to read;

• Over half of grade-six students cannot extract ideas and contextual meaning from simple English sentences;

• More than four in 10 do not meet the performance standards in mathematics;

• At the secondary level, fewer than three in 10 pass five Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate subjects, inclusive of maths and English, at a single sitting;

• Upwards of six in 10 students leave secondary school without any form of certification.

These are not, by any measure, good outcomes. Jamaica should desperately wish to change them if it is to have any chance of being a competitive economy in the technology-driven world of the 21st century, which Mr Johnson appears to appreciate.

Jamaica, like the rest of the world, he said, stood on the “threshold of a new era in education, one that demands innovation, adaptability and a renewed commitment to excellence”.

“The JTA is poised to lead the change to navigate these uncharted waters,” Johnson said.

These are welcome sentiments. They dovetail with Mr Johnson’s call at the start of his presidency for a campaign of “marketing the teaching profession as an attractive and viable option to the youths of our nation”.

What Mr Johnson and the JTA have thus far not done (but, perhaps, for the disclosure that school principals who fall under the umbrella of the association have not provided the education ministry of the real cost of educating a child, compared to the annual subvention provided by the government) is offer a road map to transformation, beyond pointing the issue of underfunding that makes qualified teachers susceptible to poaching by rich countries.

PERCEIVED FLAWS

The JTA has pointed to perceived flaws in some of the clauses in a Teaching Council Bill now being reviewed by Parliament, which, it feels, have the potential to place undue burden on, or criminalise teachers. And it talks about the important issue of school security and the need to instil values in students as part of the national curriculum.

However, other on the economic/welfare issues, there is an absence of a robust, deep, outward-facing engagement of the deeper crisis in the education system.

Take the issue of the report by the Orlando Patterson Commission on the transformation of the system, which was presented to the government more than two years ago.

That report has not been tabled in Parliament. Nor has it been subjected to any serious, government-led public discussion, except for slick, glossy television advertising promoting supposedly transformative things in education. There is the identification of the specific things, or explanations of why they are being done. Moreover, a committee was established to oversee the implementation of the report, and has been doing its job without broad stakeholder knowledge of its priorities, the basis of their selection, or how the project is being funded.

Maybe the JTA has a hand in what is taking place. But there is no sense that it has been “in the vanguard” of a full-throated discourse on the Patterson Report, including having principals of each school talking to parents and guardians about the report and what the JTA believes should be the priorities for implementation. Or if the Patterson Report got it right.

The diamond jubilee is an opportunity for the JTA to reset itself.

The opinions on this page, except for The Editorial, do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Gleaner.