Editorial | Education: better than Sisyphus

Long before he was a renowned sociologist, Orlando Patterson wrote a great novel. The Children of Sisyphus explores disillusionment and the search for meaning and betterment in their lives by a group of poor Jamaicans.

The title of that book, first published two years after Jamaica’s independence, is telling. Sisyphus, the wily and untrustworthy trickster king of Ephyra in Greek mythology, was eventually condemned, after twice cheating death, by Zeus to roll a mighty rock up a hill, only for it to tumble down every time. The punishment, thus, was for eternity.

Last week, Prime Minister Andrew Holness appointed Professor Patterson to lead a commission of distinguished academics and educators in a review of education in Jamaica and to “advise us as to what we need to do as a government to create a world-class educational system, geared towards enabling our people to fulfil their potential and develop the skills base and human capital required for Jamaica to compete successfully in the 21st century global economy”.

This newspaper harbours no doubt about the capacity of the Harvard University sociologist and fellow commissioners to more than adequately deliver on their mandate. We note, however, that this is the second time since the start of the millennium that Jamaica has embarked on this undertaking. In 2003, the former prime minister, P.J. Patterson, appointed a task force, chaired by the then president of the University of Technology (UTech), Rae Davis, with essentially the same mission. Its members included the current finance minister, Nigel Clarke. They presented their report early in 2004.

STARTING POINT

Judging by Prime Minister Holness’ remark last week, it is clear that the Davis Report notwithstanding, Jamaica hasn’t got the education stone anywhere near the top of the hill. “We have succeeded in placing people in school but ... what they are learning isn’t much to be desired,” Mr Holness said.

In this regard, the Davis Report, and what has happened with it in the decade and a half since its publication, must be a starting point for Professor Patterson’s team. For it is likely that a large part of the failure at transformation is the inability of the government, across administrations, to be fully invested in the policies and economics demanded for the magnitude of change.

When Mr Patterson appointed the Davis task force, the crisis in Jamaica’s education was reflected in the merely 37 per cent of grade one students who were deemed adequately prepared to begin primary education. The report’s target was to lift that number to 90 per cent by 2015. At grade four, when students are 11, only 58 per cent were certified literate. The task force targeted that to rise to 85 per cent over a decade.

In the recently retired Grade Six Achievement Test, the mean average score for maths was 48 per cent and slightly better, at 52 per cent, for English. In science, it was 48 per cent; social studies – 54 per cent; and communication task – 67 per cent. Similarly, the projection was for an 85 per cent average by 2015. There have been improvements in average test scores since the 2003 base year, but they still lag substantially behind the targets.

In the Caribbean Examinations Council’s Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate exams in the early 2000s, less than 11 per cent of students passed five subjects, including maths and English, in a single sitting. That is now around 20 per cent but is still far from the target of 60 per cent by 2015.

DELIVERABLES

The task force’s deliverables were predicated on, among other things, a major restructuring of the education ministry’s top-down, hierarchical structure to a decentralised model, which would include regional educational authorities. We got regional offices but not the quasi-autonomous authorities. Further, performance-based compensation for head teachers, as proposed by the task force, remains anathema for their unions, and there seems to be little appetite by the Government to advance the conversation.

The strain of the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the weakness in technology-supported teaching and learning, whose necessity was advanced by the task force, as was the need to close the quality gap between the traditional high schools and the more recently upgraded secondary institutions. The contemplated transformation, though, requires a massive effort at teacher training, inclusive of attention to science and technology.

But it couldn’t happen, the task force concluded, without major additional investment in education. At the time of the report, the Government’s spend on education was J$30.2 billion, which was 9.2 per cent of the Budget and 6.6 per cent of GDP. For this fiscal year, the Government’s projected spend is J$114.1 billion, or 13.3 per cent of the original estimates. In nominal terms, the education budget has risen by more than three and a half times in 16 years. That, however, is not the full story. It hasn’t, in real terms, kept pace with the vision.

The Davis Report called for an additional J$220 billion in the Budget over a decade, or a rise of roughly J$22 billion a year. “In other words, based on the vision of the task force, expenditure on education required a 70 per cent increase (in the first year) if the vision articulated herein are to be realised,” the document said.

Looked at another way, by 2015, the education budget, at that rate of expansion, would have been J$250 billion, which, calculated at the average exchange rate for the year the report was delivered, would translate to US$4 billion, or US$1.71 billion at the current exchange rate. As matters currently stand, a J$250-billion spend, based on a 2019 estimate of the size of the economy, would be around 11 per cent of GDP, more than double the current ratio of five per cent.

Whatever the Patterson commission says, the Government, of whatever administration, will have a heavy stone to push and a very steep incline up which it must go.