Blowing billions on education

Matin Henry, Contributor

Today, I do a double take, working on education and government consultants. The two news-making matters may not be as unrelated as it appears at first blush. The Ministry of Education, we have been advised, has the second-largest payout for advisers and consultants, after Finance and Planning.

While the minister of finance was in his son's constituency of North West Manchester threatening to throw even more money at education, the acting permanent secretary in the Ministry of Education, Grace McLean, was in Kingston rattling off the dismal statistics of poor performance in the state school system. Straight from the horse's mouth, one might say. The kind of honest confession that in another era could cost one one's job. And Trench Town High School was on the front page of The Gleaner whimpering, 'We have room'. The inner-city school is struggling to fill available spaces, with only half its 1,200-student capacity occupied.

As we commemorate 50 years of Independence, for the record, in the topsy-turvy world of the politics of education, Trench Town Comprehensive High School, as it was at inception, and Charlie Smith Comprehensive High School were built a couple hundred yards apart, but in two different uncrossable 'zones', by two different administrations - one JLP, the other PNP - as political handouts to constituents.

Political violence forced the depopulation of the areas and created serious challenges for entry from 'outside'. The schools in these two divided areas of 'political exclusion' are generally underpopulated, and seriously underperforming, even by the low standards of a generally poor performance system.

"Education will, throughout the rest of this term," Dr Peter Phillips told his audience at the graduation ceremony of the Mile Gully High School last week, "command the highest share of the Budget after the debt." The sector now accounts for 12 per cent, which is somewhat off the 15 per cent set through bipartisan consensus some years ago but never achieved.

TOO MUCH OR TOO LITTLE?

Might we not be spending too much, instead of too little on education? Especially when one considers depressing statistics like well over 1,000 citizens being murdered each year for years running, 400,000 backlog cases jamming the court system, while 85 per cent of Jamaicans who have migrated are tertiary graduates, according to recent data from the Commonwealth Secretariat presented at a migration conference here recently.

In full political flight, the minister of finance revved up his graduation audience with the tantalising hint of a bigger, better new Mile Gully High School. Pity Trench Town High can't be just towed over. "I cannot intrude on any announcement that the minister of education might want to make," Daddy Phillips teased up his listeners, "but if the minister of education were to talk to the minister of finance about the new Mile Gully High School, he would get a favourable response."

Until I see some balanced assessment of the
need for school spaces across the country, I cannot help harbouring the
question: What might a father-son comradeship in politics have to do
with a new Mile Gully High School which the minister of education hasn't
even asked for yet and is being prompted to do so by the daddy of the
MP?

FEW READY FOR PRIMARY
SCHOOL

While the gift of a new school to the people of
North West Manchester is being proposed, PS McLean's performance data
depress. According to The Gleaner report on it:
"A senior education official has painted a picture of a dismal
education system that affords little hope for achieving the lofty goal
of making Jamaica the ideal place to live, work, raise a family and do
business by 2030 unless drastic measures are put in place to correct the
situation."

Fewer than half of the little
children transitioning from early childhood to primary, Ms McLean says,
are ready for the primary level. Fewer than half of grade four students
have mastered numeracy, with a little more having mastered
literacy.

Of a cohort of 50,000 grade 11 students at
the end of secondary education, only 30,000 are sitting the external
CSEC examination. And of those who do sit CSEC, fewer than half manage
to earn passing grades one to three.

Helping Mrs
McLean along with a few more shock stats derived from an excellent
analysis of school performance done by an on-staff planner for a
University of Technology management retreat, just under 37 per cent of
those who sit CSEC pass five or more subjects. When the foundational
subjects of English language and mathematics are included among the
five, it is only 17.4 per cent of candidates who are passing and,
therefore, earning the minimum entry requirements for tertiary
education. In real numbers, this is fewer than 6,000 students out of the
cohort of 50,000.

The fact of the matter is that the
urgency of development cannot wait for a much better output from the
education system to drive it. In any case, where is the money to come
from that Minister Phillips is promising to education, if we don't
borrow more, or produce more? Incidentally, almost certainly, Trench
Town High and Charlie Smith High are World Bank schools. Can someone
check that, please?

I suggest to the minister of
finance and the Government that restoration of law and order, increasing
public safety of person and property, delivering justice, building as
is, where is entrepreneurship, supporting innovation, simplifying doing
business, titling land as capital, reforming the tax system to leave
more money in people's pockets while raising more revenue, and pushing
labour-intensive capital development projects will do more for achieving
Vision 2030 than throwing more money at
education.

The minister of education seems to have a
better handle on the matter (and should not take up the unsolicited
offer of a new Mile Gully High School). Those at the top of the system
must pay more for their own education, taking out education mortgages to
do so, and the system must be made more efficient and productive with
what it has, weeding out a lot of the remediation by getting it right
the first time.

TEACHERS, GOV'T ON
WARPATH

I was in the UK when Education Minister Ronald
Thwaites used the platform of a Gleaner Editors' Forum to tell
poor-performing teachers to pack their bags and go, and to publicly
indicate that the ministry had positioned "education officers in the
cross hairs", demanding greater accountability from them, especially in
poor-performing parishes and schools.

Leading a far
more productive system, UK Education Secretary Michael Gove is also on
the warpath for improved educational performance. Gove is pushing for a
return to the old GCE examinations, which he considers tougher. He is
dictating, down to fine details, what students should be learning and
mastering at each stage.

And on the day I left, June
27, The Independent was reporting that Gove had
imported, for advice, an American 'Witchfinder General', Michelle
Rhee, "who advocates sacking large numbers of incompetent
teachers". Gove, in welcoming Rhee and her views, said if the
UK is to transform disadvantaged schools, "the way to do so is
to be uncompromising in our standards, to make sure the teachers who are
not doing a good job move on, and that we support the teachers who are
doing a good job by paying them more and giving them freedom to
genuinely inspire the next generation".

Martin Henry is a communication specialist. Email feedback to
columns@gleanerjm.com and medhen@gmail.com.