Change we can believe in

Our thrust to create an effective education system presupposes that if administrators and teachers are held accountable for student performance, student attainment will increase. In advancing the accountability agenda, though, governments often make more demands on schools and fewer on its capacity to support the principals and teachers who are mandated to ensure the delivery of quality education.

Underperforming schools usually have facilities that are dilapidated, sometimes overcrowded and more often than not are located in high-poverty communities whose members usually have low expectations for students.

These challenges are perpetuated by systemic government structures and bureaucracies that are primarily focused on outputs. However, efficiency in public administration can only be obtained when systems are analysed, challenges mitigated and change is embraced.

Undoubtedly, Jamaica's educational landscape has undergone several such changes in the last five years and there are others on the horizon, but all these are but part of a wider agenda to reform and consequently transform our nation.

One vital part of the process of educational reform and turning our around our schools involves making changes to the operational and organisational configuration of the Ministry of Education, especially at the regional level. Gone are the days when regional offices operate simply as quasi-administrative hubs as the new dispensation requires that we elevate the joint function of teaching and learning to priority number one and the only way to achieve this goal is to establish a clearly articulated framework ensconced in law.

Empowering educators

The first feature of this framework is that of building the capacity of leaders as there is no moral correctness to enforcing standards without empowering staff. In the vision statement and strategic plan prepared by regional directors and the cadre of officers they supervise, the issue of instructional leadership development ought to be planned for with only high-quality principals and teachers being recruited, promoted, retained and rewarded.

Second, resources should be marshalled around school-improvement initiatives which focus attention on performance targets, interventions, support for teachers and their students, as well as the tactical deployment of paraprofessionals in our classrooms despite the costs to be accrued.

The time has come for us to face the reality that the classroom needs to mirror the case approach similar to what pertains in a medical setting when a patient is served by practitioners each with varied expertise. The teacher alone simply cannot guarantee the academic health of all her charges, nor can one education officer guarantee a school's full compliance with all ambits of the regulations. Increased and improved services will cost, and the scarcity of money no longer enjoys the sufficiency of a response.

Third, the framework should also stipulate school self-evaluation as a primary management tool, using data to drive decision-making processes, detect trends in performance, employ corrective measures and assess progress.

Coherent strategy

Fourth, regions need to institute a coherent strategy, the scope of which cuts across government ministries and assumes full responsibility for student achievement. To that end, therefore, stakeholders are to be like-minded and engaged accordingly, thereby optimally maximising all endeavours through partnerships with agencies of the State, parents, community-based and religious organisations, businesses, colleges and universities.

Regional offices are to lead on holding parents accountable for children's behaviour and performance, whether through sanctions, incarceration and/or education if violence in schools and, by extension, the society is to diminish.

Any discourse on refocusing educational services around improved learning outcomes has to include matters such as inequity at the secondary level, zoning, how school boards function and their chairpersons appointed, all of which are politically sensitive issues and require key players in the education arena being active participants in all stages of the educational policy process beyond advocacy.

We have got to reorganise and regroup. Although there will be casualties along the way, we have to do business differently. This is change we can believe in, change which would yield significant returns.

Maurice D. Smith is a doctoral student at Howard University. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and maurice.d.smith@bison.howard.edu.