Editorial | What school closures reveal

That 240 of Jamaica’s 732 primary schools operate with 50 per cent fewer students – or worse – than they were built to accommodate raises obvious questions for the education ministry regarding the deployment of its resources.

Clearly, there has to be some rationalisation of these facilities. More schools, after deeper and careful analysis, will have to close.

However, this matter, as important as it is, is only a small manifestation of a larger issue that demands a serious discussion, and search for solutions, before it becomes an irreversible crisis of population decline. If Jamaica is not already at that point.

Some might even call on family planners to launch a Bev Brown-in-reverse style campaign to halt Jamaica’s declining birth rate. That’s a reference to the 1980s contraceptive campaign featuring a young woman, Bev Brown, a “maths brain from primary school”, with a young child in arm and others clinging to her skirt, at the door of an affluent home begging. The tag line was: ‘Two is better than too many’.

The declining school population, and the closure this year of two primary schools – Clifton in the hills of rural St Andrew, and Salter’s Hill in St James – is in part the result of Jamaican women having fewer children, even below the two that was suggested in the Bev Brown ad. The average is now 1.9, while 2.1 is necessary just to keep a country’s population stable.

When Clifton and Salter’s Hill were shuttered this year, they catered only for a handful of the 160, and 145 students, respectively, they were capable of accommodating. Indeed, Clifton had no students enrolled last year. Salter’s Hill had 13.

These were the first schools shuttered since 2017, but the matter of under-populated primary schools is longstanding, with 604 primary schools having enrolment below capacity last year. Between 2014 and 2015, under the then education minister, Ronald Thwaites, 25 schools were closed. Others were under consideration.

As The Gleaner observed then, the education ministry has to do what is necessary, including finding creative and efficient ways of ensuring that the children of closed schools are not educationally disadvantaged.

LARGER DEMOGRAPHIC QUESTIONS

However, there are still the larger demographic questions, beyond the fact of people moving from poor, relatively isolated communities like Clifton that demand attention.

At the end of 2023, Jamaica, according to official statistics, had 7,100 fewer people than the previous year, or a negative growth rate of 0.3 per cent.

What is significant is that while the number of its elderly (65 and upwards) has in recent years either grown or remained steady, at around 9.7 per cent of the overall population, the proportion of the child population (0-14), at roughly 20.9 per cent, has been drifting downwards.

“Jamaica’s population age structure reflects an ageing population, where the child population is declining and the working age population and elderly segments are expanding,” the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) said in its recently published Economic and Social Survey for 2023. “This is usually reflected in the median age – the age that halves the population, that is, there are as many persons above as there are below the median ... Jamaica’s median age at the end of 2023 was 30.6 years, compared with 30.46 years in 2022 and 28.9 years in 2015.”

Further, in the decade to 2023, the age dependency rate – that is, the proportion of the population aged 14 and below, plus those aged 65 and over, as the ratio of the overall population – has declined 4.2. So, where in 2014 there were 44 “dependent” members of the population for every 100 of working age (15-65), today the ratio is 48.3/100.

That, as the PIOJ puts it, “translates into approximately one dependent to 2.3 persons of working age”.

The result of the Jamaica situation is a bulge in the working age population, which for a time, can be an advantage, especially in the context of an economy with high labour productivity. Which, unfortunately, is not Jamaica’s circumstance.

PROVIDE MUSCLE

The point is that a large working age population and a still relatively low age dependency ratio provide the muscle to generate the economic growth and wealth to sustain the age dependent segments.

The really deep crisis arises if, and when, the overall population stagnates or declines in absolute terms, leading to a faster relative expansion of the age-dependent groups. It is worse if that happens in the absence of a growing and efficient economy.

This, on its face, is a potentially existential problem that could confront Jamaica, on which there should be serious national discussion. And particularly where there is still time to head it off.

The country’s fertility rate is one issue to be considered.

The current total fertility rate of 1.9 children per woman of child bearing age is down, as the PIOJ pointed out, from 2.4 in 2008. “The reduction in the TFR (total fertility rate) to below replacement level fertility can lead to long-term demographic challenges, including the absolute decline of the population,” the agency warned.

Addressing this matter can’t be merely about urging women to bear children. There has to be a wide-ranging supporting social and economic policies that take into account, respect and affirm, that autonomy and agency and women. That makes the national conversation more urgent.