EDITORIAL - PNP napping on education

We agree with the call by Mrs Maxine Henry-Wilson, the former education minister, for a full parliamentary debate on her successor's plan to place failing primary-school students in special classes.

For, as Mrs Henry-Wilson said in the House this week, the matter of expanding literacy in Jamaica should be a national effort, in which all stakeholders should have a voice. Indeed, all should be encouraged to make use of their say.

What, however, has surprised this newspaper is that the Opposition appears surprised by Mr Andrew Holness' policy and that the call for a debate has come this late.

If they had been paying attention, they would have been aware that Minister Holness presented the broad outline of this policy in a 2009 address in Gordon House as part of his programme for reversing the education deficit at the primary level and, ultimately, throughout the system.

A quarter failing

The problem, as Mr Holness outlined then, was that up to a quarter of the children at grade four - where they are subject to the mandatory literary tests - fail to meet the standards.

The old conveyor system of moving the children from grade to grade up to the point of testing them for high-school readiness in the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) would be modified. No student would be allowed to sit GSAT before first achieving grade four literacy certification.

Under the proposed system, whatever the child's performance at grade four, he or she would move to grade five, but with complete diagnostics done on the poor performers.

Such children would have an opportunity at that grade to complete the literacy test and another at grade six when they advance with their cohorts. But Mr Holness said: "Only those children certified as literate will be allowed to sit the Grade Six Achievement Test in March of the following year."

Intensive support

If, at this stage, a child is still performing below his grade level, that child would be "transitioned to the Alternate Secondary Education Programme", where he would be provided with "special intensive support and intervention to advance to the next stage".

It is this programme, clearly, that has evolved into the Alternative Secondary Transition Programme (ASTEP) that Mr Holness unveiled this week to provide a safety net for the estimated 4,000 students who each year require this kind of intervention.

We agree with the Opposition that there needs to be assurance that proposed ASTEP centres at primary, all-age and junior high schools will be staffed with specialists and that other resources necessary for the remediation of these at-risk children will be available.

Additionally, Mr Holness will also be required to produce further particulars about the pedagogic approaches to be used at these centres and the social interventions that will be provided to support the efforts of teachers. It must be clear, too, how the system will be financed.

But this need not be a partisan issue - which we do not sense is the aim of Mrs Henry-Wilson - for much of what Mr Holness is now doing is informed by the recommendations of a task force established by his predecessor.

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