Wanted: A ministry of foundation education
THE INFLOW of students handicapped by shortcomings in literature and mathematics, and who are pouring into secondary and tertiary institutions each year, has put our 2030 educational vision virtually out of reach.
That vision speaks optimistically about “producing life-long learners who are productive and successful and effectively contribute to an improved quality of life at the personal, national and global levels”.
The vision does not augur well with the plurality of reports and surveys indicating that an alarming number of our students at the exit point of the Primary Exit Profile (PEP) remain illiterate.
The Reform of Education in Jamaica 2021 Survey chaired by Professor Orlando Patterson is one such report.
It showed that almost 60 per cent of students at the exit point were failing mathematics, that 33 per cent could not read, that 56 per cent could not write, and 60 per cent exhibited difficulty in comprehension!
This amounts to one word. Crisis. This majority of students, as we learn from another assessment, are being sent into high schools without being able to read at the grade seven level. The logic behind that is that students who are only able to read at grade three and lower grades have to be promoted to higher class grades in order to facilitate another incoming cohort.
There has been some improvement reported in scholarship advancement since the emergence of the school system out of the COVID-19 lockdown, yet, as a recent Gleaner editorial notes, there is little, if anything, surprising in the educational performance of Jamaican high school students in an assessment by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2022.
The OECD report is 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”.
“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).”
HEARTBREAKING SUMMATION
The most startling and heartbreaking summation was that 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.
What is more frightening and disconcerting is that the deficiencies continue to mar the performance of our students right through to tertiary where some who are distinguished in their field of specific study are hampered and embarrassed by difficulties i n comprehension.
The Gleaner editorial suggested one area which it believes to be urgently in need of a sharp tweak: the time frame for lifting outcomes in literacy at the primary level.
“These two subjects, by language primarily, are the critical foundation for all education. Children who can’t distil ideas and concepts from simple English sentences won’t be able to absorb education delivered in English. Which is over half of the students in primary (and basic) school.”
Professor Patterson’s Report highlights the need to place greater importance and channel resources into basic, or early childhood education. But is anybody out there listening?
In his remarks at the public launch of his report on January 14, 2022, the professor did not mince his words: “Early childhood education is fundamental,” he was reported in the media as saying, “This is the foundation on which education exists.”
Today we celebrate with The Gleaner the tabling of a progress report, long in coming, on the implementation of the recommendations of the Patterson Report.
The Government has broadly accepted the Patterson findings and has begun, per the report tabled by Fayval Williams, education minister, implementation work on 101 of the 145 recommendations earmarked to be completed between 2023 and 2026.
Now this study has been handed over to a committee, and so we will have to wait with bated breath on the usual drawnout discussions, lunches, and nonchalant time frame attention famously dished out by parliamentary committees on matters such as this one.
ROME WILL CONTINUE TO BURN
After all, as everyone knows, a camel is a horse designed by a committee. In the meantime, will Rome continue to burn, and will early childhood education continue to languish in the filing cabinet?
An action step that would challenge the traditional structuring of Cabinet appointments, a structure which has remained basically unchanged since 1962, is to go to war against illiteracy in our primary schools and confront the enemy with bold and imaginative steps such as the creation of a separate ministry dedicated to foundation education.
The role of this foundation ministry, fully equipped with its own minister, its own programmes, its own education officers, its own responsibilities, would be to prepare and bring our children up to a stage at which they can be formally inducted into the secondary level stream as fully literate and numerate.
This new ministry would accommodate the early childhood, primary and all-age sections, while the present ministry in charge of advanced education continues to lead secondary and tertiary education.
The foundation ministry should be the bedrock of education in this country, the fulcrum, accorded equal importance as the present ministry.
Otherwise we are missing out on the vital importance of that sector – the foundation levels for all future education in Jamaica.
Every child has a right to the best possible start in life. Research has proven that the earliest years of a child’s life are a critical period for cognitive, social and emotional development.
But now here comes the revolution; the turnaround which would demonstrate that Jamaica really believes in the value and importance of providing a solid foundation at the junior level, where it matters most, so that every child can learn, and every child must learn.
You ask why a ministry of foundation education? The answer is why not?