Editorial | Ruel Reid: pants on fire

The charitable characterisation of Ruel Reid's report of last month on results of the mock exams by students preparing for the new Primary Exit Profile (PEP) is to say that the education minister was disingenuous. Otherwise, we'd be forced to conclude that he concocted a fictional narrative, which he knows he did.

For anyone who listened to Mr Reid at that press conference, and took him at face value, would have been left with the impression that while there may be challenges with children's grasp of the PEP curriculum, and the manner in which they are to be tested on it, things were not all that bad.

Mr Reid said: "Although the Performance Task was pitched at a very high level, I am happy to report that 83 per cent of the students actually scored satisfactorily on this particular assessment, which tells me ... that once we get the depth of knowledge correct across the other subject levels, then we can also get the students performing just as well at the other levels."

In the other subject, whose results Mr Reid deemed "just about average", 48 per cent of the students, the minister said, achieved "satisfactory" score in math. For social studies it was 52 per cent, and in science, the one in which Mr Reid conceded there was "great concern", 22 per cent achieved scores he deemed to be satisfactory.

So, full speed ahead to next March and the first Performance Task element of the PEP for grade-six students, the final big assessment at primary school and a big part in determining where they are placed in high school. Grudgingly, he had delayed this test by three months.

We had thought that the outcomes revealed by Mr Reid were abysmal. We were wrong. They were worse - once bared of the facade of disingenuity constructed by the minister, which crumbled in Parliament on Tuesday in when Floyd Green, Mr Reid's deputy, answered questions posed by the shadow education minister, Ronnie Thwaites.

Of the 37,500 students who sat the test in June, only 583, or one and a half per cent, were deemed by the examiners to have mastered the subjects to the requirement of PEP and as expected of 11- and 12 year-olds. For math, 3.7 per cent - 1,379 - passed. In social studies, 2,861 students, or 7.6 per cent, passed. The performance was better in language arts, yet only 32 per cent (12,003) students achieved mastery.

Mr Reid had pumped steroids into his analysis by combining the data for mastery and near-mastery, without clearly explaining to the public what he had done, or defining what constituted the gap between the two concepts. He mumbled past it at his press conference.

We can only conclude that the minister's action was deliberate, especially in the face of the claim by Garth Anderson, the president of the Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA), that the organisation, a critical stakeholder in the process, is yet to receive full data from the mock exam.

Inevitably, Mr Reid has been unmasked. But it needn't have been like this.

GSAT'S FAILURE

There is consensus in Jamaica that the 20-year-old Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT), which determines readiness for, and placement in, high schools, hasn't lived up to its intent of preparing students to be critical thinkers, ready to absorb the education of the 21st century. It still relied too heavily on learning by rote.

But while PEP seemed to be a move in the right direction, it is clear that the system - teachers, schools, parents, and, most of all, students, are ill-prepared. Mr Reid insisted on its immediate introduction - because it has been in development for several years and teachers were being engaged since 2016.

However, until recently, curricula were still being circulated. And there remains a disconnect between what is to be taught and the capacity of many teachers to deliver. As we noted previously, when a new primary curriculum was introduced in England in 2014, it was two years before the first cohort was tested on it.

Perhaps Mr Reid has a reason for obdurately pushing ahead with PEP. Minister Reid is entitled to his personal flutter, but the future of Jamaica's children oughtn't to be risked against electoral cycles.