Exciting journey ahead
JISA WEEK 2020 celebrates 51 years of successful contribution to the education sector of Jamaica. This year we celebrate under the theme ‘Private Education in Jamaica: The True Story’. The various activities that have been scheduled in celebration of JISA Week have been so designed to not only debunk the myths of private schools, but also to celebrate the resilience of our performance leaders.
The COVID-19 pandemic has in many ways highlighted the contribution private schools continue to make in our great nation. Our school leaders had no choice but to pivot with agility as the viability of our institutions depended on it. As private schools, our operating framework is heavily dependent on the ability of our school leaders to deliver quality education as well as to develop a tactical framework to ensure viability of our business operations. Our schools are funded largely by tuition fees and so at the start of the pandemic when our schools were ordered physical closure, it became very difficult to sustain our schools. We were now forced to render services in a virtual space which was at an additional operational cost and also to maintain our physical campuses. In spite of the many challenges we faced in our respective schools, our mandate never shifted. We continued to “find value and extract it”. We focused on the desired outcomes and rallied together to collectively achieve.
Amid the challenges we faced, we remained resolute to meet the needs of our parents and students so that teaching and learning could continue. In September of 2020, 70 per cent of JISA schools reported no learning loss, which resulted in our students being able to advance to the next grade level. This achievement during the pandemic truly exemplifies the contribution of JISA schools to the Jamaican education system.
As we celebrate 51 years of outstanding contribution, we invite all of our parents and students, both past and present, our staff members to include teaching and non-teaching faculty to take a bow because you have nurtured every dream and supported every activity that has moulded us into the noble private institutions that we are. We congratulate our private school leaders who continue to provide exceptional service in education, always leading and fulfilling our mandate – on a job well done! The journey ahead of us promises to be exciting filled with great new adventures that will force capacity building and a “new approach” to education in Jamaica.