Editorial | Have another look at learning-loss data

We expect schools will face significant challenges in adjusting to a new normal as they return to face-to-face classes after the COVID-19- enforced, two-year interregnum, which worsened the education deficit for large numbers of Jamaica’s children.

There is obviously a lot of catching up to do. That has been largely acknowledged by the island’s education authorities. Nonetheless, this newspaper is concerned that policymakers and bureaucrats may have underestimated the scale of the crisis and are, therefore, not sufficiently mobilising the society for the effort that will be required to change its trajectory. The danger is of people being administered, and happily imbibing, palliatives.

Our wariness was heightened by last week’s remarks in Parliament by the education minister, Fayval Williams, on additional financial support being given to schools to help them adjust for the return to live classes, including paying for additional instructions for the at-risk children. The institutions are getting J$450 million.

Our specific concern is the number of children the education ministry has thus far assessed as needing “intensive, hands-on assistance”. The Government says 10,000. We want further and better particulars.

SAME INTERPRETATION

First, to ensure that everyone has the same interpretation of what the problem is, and, therefore, the kinds and levels of intervention required, Minister Williams should provide specifics on the diagnostic evaluations that have been undertaken and what the gaps are that have been uncovered. The data should be further broken down by education and school types – primary and secondary, traditional and non-traditional high schools, and so on.

Indeed, after the first year of the pandemic, Ms Williams reported that 120,000 students had fallen through the cracks and crevices of the education system, having completely fallen off the radar of their schools. They did not register, and neither did they log on to the online classes, which many schools made valiant attempts to deliver. Nor, apparently, did their parents or guardians turn up at the institutions for lesson plans and related instructional material. Beyond the missing children, it has been estimated that up to a third of students who signed into their virtual classes did so only sporadically.

The authorities never provided a breakout of where on the education spectrum the missing children belonged. However, 120,000 would represent approximately 59 per cent of the enrolment in government primary schools, excluding the 19,000 in early childhood departments. Measured against the enrolment in secondary schools, it would be 58 per cent. Taking the school population as a whole – primary and secondary, minus early childhood – the absenteeism was 29 per cent, roughly three in every 10 students.

Last week, Minister Williams reported that her officials had, up to then, tracked down 40,000 of the AWOL children, or a third of the number. Seventy per cent of them had been through the diagnostic tests, which would be about 28,000, of whom 10,000 will require in-depth support to bring them up to speed. In other words, 36 per cent of those who have been through the diagnostic evaluation are in need of that special attention.

MAY NOT BE AS BAD

On the basis of these numbers, and if the ratios hold, things may not be as bad as this newspaper feared. Sadly, we do not believe that we are wrong and warn the authorities against being lured into a false optimism. It would probably be worth everyone’s while, therefore, if the technocrats revisited the diagnostic data.

Indeed, as the Patterson-led task force on education reform reminded us, a third of grade-six students, based on the Primary Exit Profile, which emphasises critical thinking over rote learning, leave primary schools unable to read; 56 per cent cannot write; and 57 per cent find it difficult to extract information from simple English sentences. In the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate exams, only 42 per cent of Jamaican students pass five subjects at a single sitting, including English and/or maths. Only 28 per cent pass five with English and maths.

The point here is that even before the onset of the pandemic, Jamaica faced a crisis in its education system. COVID-19 exacerbated the problem.

Put another way, we would have thought that the one-third of students who are leaving primary school unable to read, and the nearly six in 10 who cannot navigate sentences to extract meaning, required intensive work. Then there are the ‘found’ children – 40,000. And 80,000 more who are still to be discovered. Viewed through this prism and that of the historic data on education, 10,000 needing extraordinary help seems an optimistic number.

We hope that the education authorities are right and that we are wrong. But to make sure, they should have another look at the approaches to the diagnostic tests. And they should do their sums again.