Ronald Thwaites | Building on sand?

Last week, there were two excellent events extolling the achievements of primary and high-school students in attaining skills, innovation and business practice.

It was exciting to feel and see the enthusiasm of young people to think up business ideas, to watch learning come alive, be much less boring and much more functional as groups of students applied theories and skills, not yet fully grasped, but made meaningful by the effort at application.

Commendations are in order for both the Junior Achievement Programme and the Ministry of Education for continuing and deepening a new way of teaching and learning which holds out the best hope for Jamaica becoming a country renowned for highly skilled and wholesomely rounded workers. The seminal works of Mrs Alphie Mullings-Aiken and Dr Grace McLean in charting new directions for entrepreneurial education, and the blending of technical and vocational skills with academic pursuits, are crucial contributions to national development.

We will have to flip classroom practices. It is a truism on which we have not followed through on, that boys especially will learn from doing projects more than from listening and learning. They want to see the point of the lessons being taught.

In the old and customary way, theory comes before practice. The change comes when the principles are learned and understood through application.

 

Standard curriculum

 

The new standard curriculum veers in this correct direction, but there is no assurance that it is being implemented uniformly. A significant reorientation of attitude and skills in the nation's teachers has yet to happen. Many continue to teach in the same way they always have and there is neither systematic evaluation nor strict accountability to guarantee change.

The results show. And consider the disgrace, disclosed last week, of the hundreds of students who do not even turn up to try the CSEC exams which they, or somebody else, have paid to enter.

Watching the zeal and inventiveness of some of our students begs the question as to how their example can become universal in all our schools.

First, can the nation accept and enforce the proposition that, starting now, apart from those with mental or physical challenges, no child should leave grade eleven without minimum certification in English, mathematics and at least one marketable skill?

And this must be considered the bare minimum. An introduction to scientific principles, reasonable familiarity with information technology and a suite of attitudinal competencies are also prerequisites for globally competitive career advancement.

Nothing less will do if we expect to achieve Vision 2030. Accordingly, it is very disappointing that the 2018-2019 education budget does not sufficiently, if at all, reflect these urgent imperatives.

 

Flip education budget

 

While it is very important to keep the discourse on effective education above the partisan fray, unless the accelerated transformation of education is better appreciated, budgeted and effected this year, our national security problems will continue to be outsized, growth targets unmet, and gross inequality entrenched in the land we say we love.

The current estimates before the Parliament apply more investment to remediation and second chances, worthy as these efforts are, and too little to the attainment, at the appropriate age, of high levels of literacy, numeracy and the other skills and attributes stated above.

The budget for education will have to be flipped much, as must happen in each classroom. Try as you might, the secondary and tertiary sectors can only thrive after the early-childhood and primary sectors are revolutionised.

During last week's exposition of student skills, it was opportune to reflect on what it will take to elevate Jamaica beyond a low wage-level economy. How faithful have we been to an earlier target to embed levels one and two of HEART's skills training everywhere within the secondary-school experience?

These basic levels are not ordinarily adequate for work-readiness but are preparatory for advanced training. Ideally, over a short time, the HEART academies should concentrate on levels three and four training, consonant with labour market possibilities.

Let employers be encouraged to keep the three per cent HEART contribution and undertake extensive apprenticeship programmes under the supervision, and with the certification, of the training agency and so assure much more effective outcomes.

Once again, the budget makers appear to have bowed under the weight of the status quo and undervalued the arena which, convincingly changed, alone can guarantee a solid ground for national development for all.

As it is, with some notable exceptions, we continue to build on sand.

- Ronald Thwaites is member of parliament for Kingston Central and opposition spokesman on education and training. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.