Editorial | Right move on back-to-school vaccination

It is not a position at which we have arrived lightly, but The Gleaner endorses the Government’s decision to, during the new school year, limit in-class teaching of students above age 12 to those who are vaccinated against COVID-19. Fayval Williams, the education minister, must articulate the policy with clarity and end the waffle about “giving priority” to vaccinated children.

Our support, though, comes with two provisos. First, and crucially, the Government is obligated to make the Pfizer vaccine, the one endorsed for people as young as 12, easily accessible to targeted students, no matter where they live in Jamaica. Second, the Government must make reasonable efforts, in good faith, to deliver education in alternative formats to those students who may not be inoculated.

This newspaper is acutely aware of the value of education to Jamaica’s social and economic development, of the responsibility of the Government to facilitate these national aspirations, and of the country’s shortcomings on these fronts. Indeed, only yesterday in these columns, we highlighted the oft-repeated observation that up to 70 per cent of Jamaican workers have no certification, or specific training, for the jobs that they do. Part of the reason for this is the weak foundation upon which the education system is built, notwithstanding the constitutional entitlement of Jamaican children “to publicly funded tuition in a public educational institution at the pre-primary and primary levels”.

ILL-PREPARED

Annually, over a third of the students who enter high school (children at the lower band of the group targeted for vaccinations) are ill-prepared for secondary education. This year, the situation is worse. Last month, the education ministry reported an overall pass rate of 52 per cent for grade-six students assessed under the Primary Exit Profile tests. That is down eight percentage points from the previous year, when COVID-19 began its disruption of the education system. Ten and a half per cent of the students will need intense help in maths, and over 16 per cent in language arts to lift them to secondary standards. Twenty-two per cent and 27 per cent, respectively, will require additional, if less intense, support.

Education’s problems were exacerbated by the absence of face-to-face teaching and the clear failure of the experiment at delivering education online. This situation was worsened by the fact that over 120,000 students, or 29 per cent of the total enrolment in primary and secondary schools, went missing during the school year.

It is obvious, therefore, that a return to in-class teaching and learning is necessary, and urgent, if Jamaica is to have a chance of salvaging education and not lose a generation of children to ignorance. That, in this era of COVID-19, cannot be a one-way street. Parents and students, too, have responsibilities and obligations ­– to themselves and to the broader society.

In this regard, there are several issues to take into account. The first of these is Jamaica’s third wave of its COVID-19 epidemic, being driven by the far more transmissible Delta variant. In August, with still a day before the end of the month, there were 14,898 new cases of COVID-19, an increase of 11,894, or 385 per cent, over July. The 322 deaths were 178 per cent more than for the entirety of July. There were 767 people in hospital with the virus, with nearly a fifth (19.3 per cent) of them categorised as severely or critically ill.

Further, as is the case in other countries with the Delta variant, the people who are infected with COVID-19, and who are dying from it, are increasingly younger. And they are mostly the unvaccinated. It is also known with the Delta variant that while children are less likely to become seriously ill with, or die from, the coronavirus (although they sometimes do), they can catch and spread COVID-19. Vaccinating children, therefore, has two potential positives: it helps to protect from the virus and lessens the likelihood of them infecting other people. And despite the unscientific mumbo jumbo of people who may claim to commune with higher beings, it is good science that the Pfizer vaccine is safe for children. They are not being experimented upon.

RECKLESS

It would be reckless, if vaccines for children are available, for them to remain unvaccinated, attend face-to-face classes and risk infecting teachers, students and support staff, even if these were only breakthrough cases – that is limited instances of vaccinated people contracting COVID-19.

Other factors, too, underpin the logic of inoculating students.

Approximately 220,000 Jamaican children (roughly five per cent more than all the students enrolled in the secondary system) are between 12 and 17 – the group that will, on the face of it, require the permission of parents to take the vaccine. Those of this group who attend school do not necessarily go to ones close to their homes. Schools are not zoned in that way in Jamaica. These students mostly travel by public transport. There is risk, therefore, of children travelling long distances to school contracting and/or transmitting COVID-19 en route. That possibility would be reduced if they are vaccinated.

Questions of right to privacy, choice and equality under the law will no doubt arise, given the education ministry’s directive. But rights are not absolute. There is the possibility of abridgements in circumstances that are demonstrably necessary in a free and democratic society. Jamaica faces a public health crisis. What is proposed is not a removal of a right to education, but access by other means for those who wish to exercise their right of choice against taking the vaccine.

We suspect that given the choice, most children/students would opt for the vaccine. That is a conversation parents should have with their children, especially older ones, before taking unilateral decisions to exclude them from the jab.