Ronald Thwaites | Poor results paint a grim picture

Last week, the nation got proof from the Ministry of Education itself of the gross failure of the makeshift teaching and learning system which COVID-19 has forced on us.

The diagnostic assessments conducted last month at the crucial primary-school grade-six level prove continuing catastrophic learning loss among already-weak student cohorts. The summary is that only about one-quarter of our children are at a satisfactory level in basic subjects, with the situation getting worse daily due to the fitfulness of virtual-learning efforts.

And please consider, this data is only for three grades of primary school. I do not think there has been any structured assessment at the all-important early-childhood level and we await, with justifiable apprehension, the results of appraisal at the secondary levels.

The reaction to this desperate situation is not to cast blame at anyone. What is imperative is to acknowledge the crisis and be brave enough, for the first time at last, to do something effective about it. That courage continues to elude us.

Assigning some reading and numeracy specialists to our weaker schools, and distributing more tablets, are necessary but insufficient responses to the spreading pandemic of illiteracy which is stalking the country.

It is nigh impossible for teachers to be remediating two-thirds or more of their students while advancing this year’s syllabus at the same time. The difficulty is compounded when you are trying to transmit over some jerky and unresponsive virtual platform.

There are only three alternatives. The worst and most likely, given the Government’s unwillingness to alter the present structure of the education system, is that we will try some limited, ameliorative steps and delude ourselves that we are catching up.

The other two choices are more radical and predictably more effective. One is to acknowledge the substantive loss of the March to December 2020 academic period, reopen the schools in January and spend until June 2021 recovering from the lost learning. Special arrangements can be made for those relatively few who have not fallen behind. Skipping or repeating a grade will have to be contemplated if all students are to recover, or not be held back.

REMEDIATION PERIOD

The most far-reaching possibility would be to treat calendar year 2021 as an expanded and intensive period for remediation and advancement. It would mean adding a further 60 days of teaching and learning, remunerating teachers for the additional time (while remembering that they get paid while on vacation anyway) and, where appropriate, contracting the curriculum with the primary purpose of ensuring that everyone achieves appropriate levels of mastery in the core subjects of language arts, mathematics, science and social studies. Nothing less should be acceptable.

Do that, hold everyone accountable, and define the effort as a national priority – supported by needed nutrition, transportation and behavioural interventions – and I am sure that learning deficits can be reduced and grade curricula substantially covered.

There is no substitute for additional contact time in our present circumstances. No, I am ignoring the persistence of the COVID-19 virus. To repeat from previous columns, the public health specialists have offered reasonable protocols which can govern school reopening. They should be tried in January.

In as large and diverse an education system as ours (though small by international comparison), the inertia of habit and history stifles innovation and reaction to emergencies. This time is the worst to continue that pattern. The strictures of the Education Code of 1980 never contemplated the debacle to our students’ and the nation’s future which the COVID-19 assessments have thrown up. It would be the height of irresponsibility and moral and political abdication to downplay the predicament, thrash around casting blame at the incapacity of everyone but our interest group, and continue the scandal of business as usual in our schools, perhaps with just a few tweaks.

History will not absolve us. For God’s sake, let us have a heart for the innocent and unsuspecting victims – our children.

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