EDITORIAL - Groping in the dark on school discipline

Some years ago, Jamaica's education ministry launched what it called its Safe Schools initiative, under which specially trained police personnel are stationed in at-risk schools to intervene in and help defuse problems often related to criminal violence that would fall outside the normal purview of school authorities.

This programme was established with good reason - the growing incidence of violence, by students and, not infrequently, parents and guardians, in or around school compounds.

Indeed, this is a problem about which the education minister, Mr Andrew Holness, as did his predecessor, Mrs Maxine Henry-Wilson, often speaks.

In fact, based on his public pronouncements, the issue of indiscipline in schools and the social and economic factors behind it occupy a substantial bit of Mr Holness' thinking. In the circumstances, we would have expected that the minister's key policy advisers would have been seized of the issue as he seeks solutions to what we have been led to believe to be among the contributors to Jamaica's weak educational outcomes.

Disturbing state of affairs

It is against this backdrop that we are flabbergasted that the permanent secretary in the education ministry, Ms Audrey Sewell, is not only surprised at the data regarding school suspensions and expulsions but appears to have no policy context in which to deal with the numbers.

"It is the first time I have sat and looked at it (the data) globally," Ms Sewell told this newspaper. "It is significant, and nobody can feel comfortable to that level."

What is that level?

Based on the ministry's data, almost 26,000 students were suspended from Jamaican secondary schools over the past three years, for a simple average of 8,666 a year. Nearly 170 students, on average, have been expelled each year for the past three years.

It is unclear, however, what precise story these figures tell, or just how useful they are to the education ministry to inform policy.

Therefore, suspensions affect, annually, 3.5 per cent of the secondary-school population, which enrolment data place at 247,000. In the case of annual expulsions, the ratio would be 0.06 per cent of enrollees in secondary schools.

We do not know, and have not been made aware, whether these ratios are good or bad and how they square with regional and international norms, although Ms Sewell apparently thinks that the numbers are high.

Worse, in our view, is the apparent absence of information regarding the periods of suspension as well as the infractions for which students are sent home. But even more alarming is the seeming lack of knowledge by the education ministry of what happens to these students once they have left the system - whether on suspension, or having been expelled.

"I hope none of them has slipped through the cracks," said Ms Sewell. "We have a responsibility to all of them."

Fulfilling that responsibility starts with fashioning clear, workable policies, which can't happen with an absence of information.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.