Editorial | Debate school board plan

It remains dumbfounding that two years after the Patterson Commission delivered its report on overhauling Jamaica’s education system, the document has not been tabled in Parliament, and neither has the Holness administration engaged a full-throated public discussion of its findings.

So, while the Government appointed a blue-riband committee, chaired by economist Adrian Stokes, to oversee its implementation, the vast majority of Jamaicans have no clue of what is to be implemented. Neither do they know the project’s timetable, have any idea of the cost or how it is to be funded.

In other words, the Government has thus far failed to give itself the best possible opportunity of gaining the public’s support for this necessary, and potentially transformative, set of recommendations, even if some may be in need of tweaking.

The administration may be on the same path with respect to another education-related initiative, which, if there is a failure of discussion and compromise, could lead to open warfare between the churches and education trusts that own schools and the Government, which helps to fund them. That, if it happens, would be detrimental to a sector that is already in a deep crisis.

Which is why the education minister, Fayval Williams, must urgently publish the recent consultants’ report on the approach to school governance, including the Government’s relationship with church- and trust-owned schools. But merely publishing the document must not be an end in itself, but rather a precursor of a deep and broad stakeholders’ dialogue on the issue.

PROBLEMS WELL KNOWN

The basic problem of Jamaica’s education system is well known. It delivers poor outcomes. Over a third of students, children mostly in the 11 to 12 age range, leave primary school vastly ill-prepared for secondary education. Half of them cannot extract information from simple English sentences.

At the secondary level, the majority end high school without certificates. Of the students who write the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) exams, fewer than three in 10 (28 per cent) pass five subjects, inclusive of maths and English, at a single sitting. Under 30 per cent of the cohort is enrolled in any form of tertiary education. Around 70 per cent of tertiary students are female.

These outcomes largely reflect the vast disparity in the quality of the schools children attend. Those whose parents can afford to send them to private preparatory, rather than government primary schools, are far more likely, based on their tests at grade six, to transition to the island’s so-called traditional high schools, which are mostly owned by churches and education trusts. These are the schools that tend to have the best performances in CSEC, and higher exams.

Since the 1950s, denomination- and trust-owned schools have been partially funded by the Government, which pays all but a handful of the island’s teachers. This arrangement was part of the Government’s bid to increase access to education, especially at the secondary level, which, until then, was open to only a small proportion of the island’s population.

The churches and trusts, however, name the majority of the members, including chairmen, of the schools they own, even though the formal appointments are by the education minister.

THREE MAIN REASONS

The gap persists between the church and trust schools and those fully controlled by the Government. There are three main reasons for this.

The first is the difference in the quality of the primary and pre-primary preparation of students who end up at the elite schools. Second, the parents, as well as the alumni of the students who attend church- and trust-owned schools, tend to be richer, and therefore contribute significantly to the funding of these institutions – well beyond the Government’s allocation of J$17,000 per secondary students.

But critically, church- and trust-owned schools mostly have better governance structures, especially with respect to their boards.

As the Patterson Commission observed: “There is an imbalance in the availability of qualified and competent representatives. Schools that are overseen by churches or trusts tend to attract more qualified and experienced board members. These schools tend to have an established reputation as a ‘traditional school’ and have carved out a legacy as a top performing academic institution. Therefore, a membership position on the school board is perceived as a key form of service (albeit unpaid) an alumnus can offer their alma mater and achieves the aim of upholding the standard of the institution.”

Apparently, taken to its logical conclusion, the recent report by the education ministry’s consultants would undermine the governance autonomy of church- and trust-owned schools.

Clearly, as this newspaper has argued in the past, the Government, while spending taxpayers’ money to support institutions, has a right to set broad education policy to meet national goals. However, these policies should not egregiously upend institutional arrangements so as to pose a threat to systems that have delivered quality performance. The aim must be to improve the governance arrangements at the schools owned by the Government.

It would make sense in the circumstances for Minister Williams to immediately initiate a debate on the consultants’ report. And it still is not too late to get one going on the Patterson Report.