Basil Jarrett | How some schools thrived during COVID ... and why others struggled

Yesterday’s publication of the Educate Jamaica 2023 High School Academic Rankings was in many ways surprising, but fairly unsurprising in others. For me personally, I was quite surprised at the extent to which some of our girls’ schools have fallen due to COVID, presumably due to my misguided assumption that the girls would have fared far better with online classes, given that they are supposedly more focused and more settled than boys at that age.

Take St Hugh’s High School, for instance. At the last rankings in 2018, the girls from Leinster Road sat at 11th in the rankings, with 94.7 per cent passing five subjects with both math and English. This year, their performance has been so badly affected by COVID that they are now firmly rooted at the bottom of the table at 27th place, with an overall score of 55 per cent.

Then there is Ardenne who haven’t actually improved their raw scores post-COVID, but have maintained their numbers and moved up to sixth from 17th place, due mainly to the fallout affecting the other schools. Of course, ICHS and Campion trading the one and two spots is almost par for the course right now, as the two powerhouses once again grab top billing at one and two, respectively.

SECRETS TO THEIR SUCCESS

Which raises the obvious question of “How did they do it?” Why such disparities across the board?

Well, according to Ainsworth Darby, chairman of Educate Jamaica, “The COVID pandemic had a disastrous effect on the performance of many of our traditional top-performing schools, so much so that only these 27 schools were included in the rankings, by having over 50 per cent of their students passing five subjects with both math and English.” At the same time, however, he is also quick to point out that schools such as Immaculate, Campion, St Andrew High School for Girls, Wolmers’ Girls’ School, Montego Bay High School and Ardenne High appeared seemingly unscathed by COVID, a fact that he attributes to the strong teaching and learning systems in place prior to the pandemic.

More specifically, Darby credits good and proactive leadership, the excellent adoption and use of technology across the board, excellent or very good home/school partnerships, and the creation of independent and proactive learners as some of the most important factors responsible for the results. He also credited the impact of having a resilient and adaptable teaching and administrative staff on board during the pandemic.

WHEN THE PRINCIPAL CAME KNOCKING

What is glaringly missing from Darby’s top five reasons is a wad of cash. Again, one would have assumed that near the top of the list of any COVID emergency plan to save academics would be a boatload of dollars. That was part of the assumption we made at my own alma mater, when the acting principal came knocking in 2020, desperately calling on the old boys to trump up $3M to fill the COVID-sized hole that was left in the school’s budget after we shuttered all the extra-income earning activities. Robinson was the face and the point-man of a massive COVID-19 relief drive, organized by my local Old Boys Association executive, and extending to alumni as far away as Florida, New York and Canada. We used social media, mainstream media, GoFundMe, cash app, PayPal, and any other channel we could find to get desperately needed funds into the hands of the principal. Not even the money under your mattress was safe. Just do a quick Google search of ‘JC old boys launch COVID relief plan’ or make a few clicks on our official JCOBA Facebook page, and you will see the extent of the COVID relief effort, led proudly and stoutly by our acting principal and energetically supported by our old boys.

IT TAKES MORE THAN CASH TO CARE

Thanks to the effort, much more than the $3m was raised and literally handed over to the principal and the school, to say nothing of the relief supplies, Internet data and other in-kind donation that was generated. Was it needed? Yes. Did it keep the engines turning at the plant? Absolutely. But did it propel our academics into the stratosphere? Hardly. At the last publication of the rankings in 2018, JC sat at 33rd, with a score of 69.7 per cent. This year we’ve fallen to 65 per cent but moved up to 20th position, simply because others, like the aforementioned St Hugh’s High, have fared much worse during COVID. But if it’s any consolation, at least we can take comfort that we just managed to nip our North Street rivals by just under one percentage point. Any win is a win though, right?

HARD TIMES CALL FOR STRONG LEADERS

The lesson here is that, yes, it did take cash to care during COVID. But it takes more than cash to create a winning academic environment, pandemic or no pandemic. Just listen to the reflections of Stacey-Ann Reynolds, Grace Bastion and Nadine Molloy and you will see the common threads of strong leadership, excellent use of technology, a strong and supportive partnership between home and school, independently driven students, and perhaps most importantly, a resilient and adaptable teaching and administrative staff being repeated as the critical enablers of that academic excellence and resilience. It is here that I believe that the focus should be, post-COVID, as we try to emulate and replicate the success of those schools that have emerged relatively unscathed by the pandemic.

The truth is, COVID is now behind us and there are actually positive lessons that it has left us with. Schools like St Hugh’s will bounce back. They have an amazing set of teachers, administrators and past students to guarantee this. I sincerely hope though that these recent rankings will serve as an alarm bell for our educators and stakeholders, that the job isn’t done yet, and we still have quite some work to do.

Major Basil Jarrett is a communications strategist and CEO of Artemis Consulting, a communications consulting firm specialising in crisis communications and reputation management. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.