EDITORIAL - Unrealistic plans for education?

Published in the Jamaica Gleaner: Wednesday | August 15, 2007

Both manifestos of the People's National Party (PNP) and Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) for this upcoming election promise compulsory enrolment and attendance in schools.

The outgoing president of the Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA) was quoted in the Gleaner yesterday as saying that this plan is unrealistic because there is, at present, no space in the schools to accommodate all Jamaica's children. We guess that the Ministry of Education should be grateful that all of our children do not turn out to school on the same day or there would be chaos.

We are told that many airlines intentionally overbook flights, knowing that not all the passengers will turn up. Does our Ministry of Education supply schools with classrooms, furniture and teachers expecting that 15-35 per cent of the students will not turn up each day?

It is a shame that it has taken an election to get this issue back on the education agenda after a first attempt in 1983. Surely, the impact of high school absenteeism on our society and economy should have led to this issue being addressed before now.

Children who are habitually absent from school cannot be expected to learn well enough to pass examinations and to perform near to their personal potential. The resulting dysfunctionality must lead to low labour productivity and an increase in crime.

School absenteeism in Jamaican schools has been endemic on Fridays in rural areas. Surely effective strategies (including incentives and disincentives) can be found to reduce this long-standing phenomenon? If we cannot solve this simple problem, how are we ever going to reduce crime?

Since both the JLP and the PNP have promised radical improvementsin schooling should they win the election - including compulsory attendance - the prognosis for Jamaican education would appear to be rosy. It will require savvy social engineering and insightful behaviour-change strategies to bring about the revolution in school attendance to which both parties aspire.

Not all the serious problems facing our 45-year-old nation are economic. An undereducated and underperforming citizenry may hold back the development of a nation, as much as poor monetary and fiscal policy. Jamaica will never achieve First-World status unless our human capital is allowed to achieve its entrepreneurial potential.

The then Minister of Education Dr. Mavis Gilmour, in reporting to Parliament in 1983 on the progress of the compulsory attendance programme in two pilot parishes, disclosed that the turnout rate had reached 85 per cent from less than 65 per cent in the first term; but the rate declined in the second term.Thereafter, the effort was not sustained.

The pessimism expressed by the JTA president on the PNP's current plan covers the corollary need for more teachers with university degrees by 2015. The doubts derive from the fact that the tertiary institutions do not have the capacity to upgrade 17,000 teachers in this time frame.

The political will to transform these negatives must be found. Accepting absenteeism and illiteracy and underperformance as normal - and planning for them - will ensure that these phenomena persist. A commitment to a reduction of waste in the economy must include waste of human resources.

As we look toward a future for Jamaicans, characterised by sustainable prosperity, we must demand more from our leaders and policymakers than perpetuating the unsolved problems of the past.

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