Why is our literacy rate so low?
ACCORDING TO the 2015 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Country Profile of Jamaica, more than 161,000 males and close to 74,000 females who are over the age of 15 lack basic reading and writing skills, making Jamaica’s adult literacy rate to be 88.1 per cent.
The published figure for 1999 was 79.9 per cent, so in 16 years our official literacy rate improved noticeably.
Many people believe these figures to be way too high!
The Report of the Jamaica Education Transformation Commission (JETC) chaired by Professor Orlando Patterson stated that most students at the primary level were barely literate. According to the JETC, the 2019 Primary Exit Profile (PEP) exam revealed that 33 per cent of students cannot read or can barely do so; 56 per cent of students cannot, or can barely, write; and 58 per cent of students cannot, or can barely, find information on a topic.
These low levels of literacy – lower in the past – would have accumulated and aggregated over the decades to produce scandalously low literacy rates.
After 60 years of political Independence, should we be satisfied with so many adult Jamaicans being functionally illiterate?
Some say our poor educational outcomes are a legacy of slavery, which our leaders have not been able to overcome and transcend after almost 200 years. But what of other Caribbean nations with a similar history of slavery and colonialism? Are we regional leaders in literacy and educational achievement? Or laggards?
The literacy rate of Trinidad and Tobago for 2010 was 98.7 per cent, coming from 96.9 per cent in 1990, and 95.0 per cent in 1980.
The literacy rate of Barbados for 2014 was 99.6 per cent. The Antigua and Barbuda literacy rate for 2015 was 99.0 per cent. For 2014 the Grenada literacy rate was 98.6 per cent, and for 1970 the literacy rate for St Vincent and the Grenadines was 95.6 per cent.
No country can have a 100 per cent literacy rate, because there will always be a number of mentally challenged persons who are unable to master that skill set. One must also consider that, even if the education system currently is highly effective, there will always be numbers of elderly persons sidelined by the colonial education system in their youth reflected in the current figures.
DEEP INEFFICIENCIES
But a literacy rate of 88 per cent – even if that figure is accurate (which is unlikely) – indicates deep inefficiencies and inadequacies in Jamaica’s education system, for which both our major political parties, which have played musical chairs in government over the last 80 or so years, are responsible.
And here I am not talking about performance in CXC/CSEC/ CAPE examinations or university enrolment which is what has the potential to grow our economy to bring prosperity to our nation; I am talking about basic literacy skills which allow Jamaicans to read newspapers, and reports on corruption and government malfeasance. Low literacy skills and educational achievement in the population keeps incomes low, and makes large segments of the population dependent on government handouts and political favours. Our struggle to conserve Jamaica’s natural environment, and to combat political corruption is made more difficult when large numbers of citizens have to depend on audio and video sources for their information on important national issues. It is likely that a more educated electorate would not be so easily duped by what passes for political manifestos and campaigning.
The UNESCO data quoted above is extra troubling because it confirms a profound gender bias against males in Jamaican education, long advanced by educators such as Professor Errol Miller. So-called “gender activists” – really feminist activists – have long tried to convince us that women in Jamaica are oppressed in every way. The fact is, there are vastly more school places in traditional high schools for girls than boys, which creates a gender imbalance at university favouring females. Fixing our broken education system must have a reparations component to restore the gender imbalance against males built up over many decades.
SOLUTION
What is the solution, you may ask? Far be it from me to advance better strategies to fix the problem than those contained in the 2004 Report on Education Reform by a team of experts led by Prof Rae Davis, and the 2021 Orlando Patterson-led Jamaica Education Transformation Commission.
The question to be answered is why after 20 years the vast majority of the recommendations from the Rae Davis Task Force are still to be implemented? And why after more than a year there has been no noticeable policy response to the Patterson-led commission? Both political parties are involved it this failure to reform our malfunctioning education system. In whose interest is an education system that produces semi-literate, undereducated and lightly skilled citizens?
Is it incompetence? Or is it deliberate?
When after Independence the Jamaican government borrowed millions from the World Bank to build high schools, this was a wonderful opportunity to increase the value of our human capital. At that time, to get into one of the few high schools, children had to “pass” the Common Entrance Examination; if they “failed”, they remained in all-age schools. What the government did with the World Bank money was to build about 80 junior secondary schools; the children sent to those schools were those who failed to get into the traditional high schools. Not one high school was built to increase the number of quality high school places!
Clearly there was no intention to increase the value of our human capital. Who, then, would cut cane, weed bananas, or pick coffee? Successive Jamaican governments have protected the labour supply of the same plantations on which our forefathers were enslaved. Not much has changed since then.
More education for our youth may cause them to wake up and reject our two backward political parties.
But wait? Is this not what is happening already, with the majority of Jamaicans declining to vote for either party in the last election?
Maybe the majority of us are wide awake already!