Editorial | The parent-teacher association and other failings

Unless the National Parent-Teacher Association of Jamaica (NPTAJ) can offer compelling reasons for its inaction, this newspaper shares Education Minister Fayval Williams’ disappointment at the association’s failure to offer comments on the bill for the establishment of the National Teaching Council (NTC), which is being reviewed by a joint select committee of Parliament.

Even at this stage, notwithstanding Ms Williams’ declaration that the time has passed for the committee to formally receive submissions, the NPTAJ’s president, Mitsie Harrison Dillon, should cause her association to offer its views – which it cannot but have – on the contents of the bill. Ms Williams, in her role as the committee’s chairman, should accommodate Ms Harrison Dillon and the NPTAJ. At the same time, the NPTAJ ought to use this episode to reset the association for it to become a robust, policy-centred advocacy group.

Meanwhile, Minister Williams should internalise, and apply to herself and the Government, her admonition of the NPTAJ with respect to the tepid public response, thus far, to the report by the Orlando Patterson Commission on reforming Jamaica’s education system.

A body called the National Teaching Council already exists in Jamaica. It was established in the wake of the 2004 Rae Davis Task Force – whose mandate was very much the same as Patterson’s – with the aim of bringing greater levels of professionalism and accountability to the teaching profession. But the current council, while it registers teachers and oversees some professional development programmes, is a creature of policy rather than law. That is to change. Indeed, the law will require teachers to be licensed and to meet certain fit-and-proper criteria to enter classrooms; and the NTC would, essentially, be the profession’s standards and regulatory body.

Obviously, an organisation that represents the parents and guardians of half-million children in Jamaica’s early-childhood, primary and secondary education systems ought to have an interest in how the teaching profession is regulated, and any legislation attendant thereto. Rather, not an interest but an obligation.

DID NOT TAKE UP INVITATION

However, according to Ms Williams, the NPTAJ did not take up the invitation to send written submissions to and/or appear before her parliamentary committee.

“We would have liked to hear from the parents,” the education minister told the radio station, Nationwide. “There is a formal entity called the National Parent-Teacher Association of Jamaica. We would have expected that they would have been there to represent parents, but to date they haven’t.” Neither in person nor in writing.

Said Ms Williams: “I am really disappointed!” So are we.

The situation, though, is salvageable, assuming that the leader of the NPTAJ appreciates its potential for helping to shape and influence policy, as well as a vehicle that, as Minister Williams hopes, encourages parents in “reinforcing the positive values being taught in school”.

“It (the NPTAJ) is an entity that I believe has been way too quiet,” said Ms Williams.

It says something about any organisation which represents the interest of large numbers of citizens that a minister of Government criticises it for being “too quiet”. Although it is welcome, and worth celebrating, that Ms Williams wants, and invites, policy debate from education interests. Which raises the matter of the reset of the parent-teacher association.

Making noise for its own sake won’t cut it. The NPTAJ has to move beyond whinges over this or that fee, or off-the-top-of-the-head complaints against proposed policy action. Policy critiques must be grounded in data and robust analysis. Which means that the organisation has to see itself through new lenses. It has to overhaul how it conducts its relations with constituents, schools and the Government.

EXPENSIVE TASKS

These, its leaders will no doubt say, are expensive asks. Yet, many of the people with the competence to accomplish these tasks are also parents with children in school. Many would be happy to volunteer their skills and time, if they were found and asked. That will require effort from the leaders. The organisation also has to become adept at fundraising.

However, having lectured the NPTAJ on its failure with respect to the Teaching Council Bill, Ms Williams should remind herself of her own posture, thus far, on the Patterson Report – more than half a year after it was delivered. This more than 350-page document contains a raft of recommendations aimed at rescuing Jamaica’s failing education system, from which a third of students complete their primary education illiterate, and nearly six in 10 cannot extract ideas and meaning from simple English sentences. Or from which fewer than three in 10 students who sit the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate exams pass five subjects in a single sitting, with maths and English among them.

Education in Jamaica, on which the country spends over five per cent of gross domestic product, is in crisis. It is in need of urgent attention. A national discussion on the Patterson Report is imperative. But Minister Williams and the Government seem reticent about getting it going. No one wishes to remind Ms Williams about stones and glass houses.