Ronald Thwaites | Education’s predicament

I want to tell you about a primary school which has a long history and is connected nominally to a major religious denomination. Its story is replicated elsewhere throughout the country and explains, in part, why the crime rate is so stubborn that even the bludgeon of states of emergency can’t budge it.

More than that, the fate of the more than 300 largely poor, black children who attend this school will carry in their cramped lives the underachievement of their ambitions and the unending inequality in the Jamaican society.

Those in charge of the school are reasonably dedicated, well-qualified teachers. Some have become so frustrated that they slack off and take advantage of the lack of accountability which the permanence of their jobs encourages. Here is some of what they face.

The principal reckons that three-quarters of the basic school ‘graduates’ who come to her first grade each year lack the motor, social and emotional skills to begin primary school effectively. This is where the problem starts. She assesses that it takes nearly a year of intense work to have these kids catch up, by which time they are catapulted, quite unprepared, to a higher grade.

Earlier this year, I initiated a debate in the House of Representatives on the subject of early-childhood education policy. It happened by default one day when all those scheduled to speak in the easily forgotten Budget Debate had chickened out.

The effort was meaningful, however, because it was one of the few times serious national policy was discussed in the very forum where that should be paramount. Also, over a dozen members on both sides spoke, all agreeing that this sector needed very urgent attention.

The Parliament was dissolved before the debate could be completed and policy suggested. So, to the nation’s peril, the discourse may well have been futile. Peril, you ask? Yes, for the predicament of early- childhood and early primary education is one of the greatest problems the nation faces, aggravated by the ongoing pandemic.

HALF THE CHILDREN ARE HUNGRY

At the school I am telling you about, more than half of the children come to school hungry. Since there is no provision for breakfast, the school uses the meagre profit from the canteen to provide some porridge each morning. The principal has to be a beggar as much as an administrator, just to ensure that the children have enough to eat so that they can learn.

She relates that only about 30 per cent of parents show any consistent interest in their child’s schoolwork and that to get many of them to parent-teacher meetings, the school has to be sure to advertise refreshments. Completed homework is the exception rather than the rule.

The school was one supplied with tablets, but all but 20 of these are now obsolete. No funds have been either promised or delivered, as was nationally assured, for replacements whether to PATH, near-PATH students or teachers. Internet access for the school has been disabled for more than a year.

They did a survey recently to determine the capacity of students to access the current distance-teaching and learning effort. Only 69 of the 300-plus students have even limited opportunity. For those without implement or connectivity, lessons are prepared but books are in short supply as many, previously issued, have been defaced.

Four classes are still held in a large hall separated by blackboards. Mayhem often prevails. Notions of transformation, ‘No child left behind’, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, all spoken of so blithely by education policyheads, are so much unrealistic chatter to this school community – trying their best but lacking the fundamentals.

Variants of this school’s predicament, some better, others worse – for this is not a deep rural or inner-city location – describe the state of primary education pre-, during and post-COVID-19. It is the reason for the apartheid crippling our high schools. Such schools are the building blocks for the poor tertiary education uptake which Dr Densil Williams so clearly defines as the foundation of national underdevelopment.

Nobody can deny any of this, yet when the Government finds it possible to increase spending last week, more money goes to fixing roads than to improving education.

In his declining years, I had the opportunity of conversing with the late Mr Edward Seaga about education and training. It was he who impressed on me the critical importance of reforming parenting and recommended strongly that the State take primary responsibility for the early-childhood sector.

If the lockdown of almost all schools continues for even another month, my distressing prediction is that up to 40 per cent of basic and private schools will close permanently. Many of their best teachers cannot be paid because there are no fees, and so are resigning.

Some of them are taking up vacancies in the public- school system where they can teach from home, get paid a full salary, while offering extra lessons to some of the same children from the schools in which they were previously employed. Who can blame them?

There needs to be an urgent and public dialogue led by the ministries of Health and Education on how to get the schools functioning safely. Minister Williams is listening and trying. She will have to contend with others whose excessive fears and narrow interests advance a problem for every solution. With the best will in the world, what we are doing now isn’t working.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.