EDITORIAL - JTA must back move to rescue failing schools

LENVAS COLE, the vice-principal of Balaclava High School in St Elizabeth, misses the point.

It is not enough, he must be made to understand, to parade the one or two students who may gain eight passes at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) exams while the bulk of the rest can only scratch around in the tests.

Indeed, that kind of reasoning is almost as bad as that of Mr Leslie Riley, the principal of the Marcus Garvey High School in St Ann, who undervalues CSEC high achievers because of his presumption that they are unlikely to be street-smart and probably won't be top entrepreneurs.

Reasoning apart, Mr Cole and Mr Riley have something else in common: both men are senior officials at two of the high schools that the education ministry deems to be failing, and in which it plans to intervene.

The other two identified by Mr Andrew Holness, the education minister, are Holy Trinity in Kingston and Glengoffe High in St Catherine. We expect that the principals and senior teachers at these schools will offer myriad excuses for bad exam results and poor discipline at their institutions, and even accuse the minister of engaging in a smear campaign.

Jta must support interventions

Such a response will not solve the problems of these schools, or the larger crisis in education in Jamaica, so Mr Holness should ignore the complaints.

Moreover, we believe that the Jamaica Teachers' Association should back the efforts to rescue the identified failing schools and offer urgent and specific strategies to shore up others that are at-risk.

In this regard, Mr Paul Adams, the new president of the teachers' union, must eschew the approach of his recent predecessors of shifting blame and of failing to hold their members accountable.

The point is that we recognise that some of the issues that confront poor-performing schools are beyond the control of the teachers. They can do little about inadequate classrooms; high, less-than-ideal teacher-students ratios; or that a school may operate on a shift system. However, leadership matters, which is one part of the education equation to which, up to now, insufficient attention has been paid.

More specific accountability

People who run schools, like CEOs in firms, have to be judged on specific outcomes for which the production of literate students who pass exams to prove their competence carries substantial weight. For, despite the contention of head teachers like Marcus Garvey's Mr Riley, it is not enough to posit the concept of continuous learning and the possibility that today's illiterate might be tomorrow's corporate leader, or worse, that the child who excels in academics may not be able to hustle.

In other words, there are schools with the kinds of problems highlighted by Balaclava's Mr Cole, and worse, where, as Mr Riley put it, "an inordinately high number of students" don't fail to meet the base expectation and where discipline remains decent. It is not enough, therefore, to absolve failure by merely pointing to other people's inadequacies and failing to be personally accountable.

In circumstances such as these, in other environments, CEOs are fired and a receiver may be sent into the broken business.

In the United Kingdom, it similarly and often happens with failing schools.