Poverty has little bearing on students

By Jaevion Nelson

IT ISN'T uncommon for people who shape public opinion in Jamaica to disparage the poor. They often express envy for the central, rhetorical and exploitative place the poor are subjected to in political campaigns, and blame them for the state of the nation, including its decrepit education system. The latter really unsettled me as I contemplated Ruel Reid's assertion that disproportionately blames the poor for Jamaica's low education outcomes.

Reid notes, "We are at the same place that we were in 1967 and, if people are continuously in poverty, their focus is not going to be on education, and the data supports it, because even after we do ASTEP (Alternative Secondary Transitional Education Programme), we still have 10-14 per cent of kids who have serious cognitive deficiencies as a result of those socio-economic issues" (The Gleaner, April 22, 2013). Reid is erroneously parsing the facts. Research shows educational outcomes have been increasing, and the cognitive deficiencies he points to have less to do with poverty and more to do with the inadequacies of the education system.

Here are 10 challenges, taken from the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CaPRI) Report Card on Education and recent government data, which show factors that have far more impact on our educational outcomes:

47 per cent of the 25,160 teachers do not have degrees;

Only nine per cent of secondary school teachers are qualified to teach grades 10-11 mathematics;

72 per cent of early-childhood teachers do not have a degree and 44 per cent of special-education teachers do not;

At least 1,200 teachers are underdeployed while several schools are in desperate need of more teachers;

Student assessments are largely used for placement, not student performance;

Only three per cent of the education budget is allocated to early-childhood education;

55,000 pupils in early-childhood education are in inadequate and small schools;

Principals do not have autonomy to hire staff on a needs basis;

Of the 164 secondary schools, only 14 offer students a 70-per cent chance of passing Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate mathematics, and only 28 schools for English;

The Education Act is one of the main obstacles to achieving savings, accountability and higher performance.

I stand corrected, but these do not appear to be a result of poverty. Moreover, 56 per cent of the wealthiest Jamaicans have no secondary or post-secondary certification (CaPRI 2012). Importantly, these challenges persist despite budgetary allocation as a percentage of GDP well above many developed countries. Admittedly, I would be negligent to pretend poverty has no impact on student learning. Money is the main reason cited in the Survey of Living Conditions why many children are absent from school.

Critical questions

We must ask some critical questions about our education system where 37 per cent of children don't complete secondary school and only one in four who complete have certification. What has been stifling educational outcomes? The answers yielded will show it has less to do with family size and income and much more to do with the raft of issues outlined above.

From as early as primary school, children from poorer families are disadvantaged because their counterparts can afford private schooling, which disproportionately increases their chances of earning places in traditional high schools that are better managed, have qualified teachers, smaller classroom sizes, well-resourced libraries, and computer labs. Wealthier children score better in all GSAT subjects by as much as 30 per cent, according to CaPRI. Is Reid suggesting poverty accounts for the 30 per cent gap? The situation is worse in rural Jamaica: 80 per cent have no certification. The problem of low educational performance is clearly far more multifaceted than Reid's family size, values and attitudes and irresponsibility hypotheses allow.

Too many other crucial factors are at play for him to disproportionately highlight these issues.

The support for this kind of blame-the-poor reasoning is too frightening. What did poor people ever do to be serenaded with such disdain that they are why we are in this educational rut? Why do we make them and the wider society believe we - including decision-makers - are in no way culpable for poverty, low literacy and numeracy, crime and violence and unemployment? Imagine if we dedicate some of this disdain to political leaders when they excuse their failures and blame their predecessors for their ineptitude, lack of political will, corruption and nepotism. What a cohesive and just Jamaica this would be! We really ought to treat the poor as deserving of respect and dignity!

Jaevion Nelson is a youth development, HIV and human rights advocate. Send comments to jaevion@gmail.com or @jaevionn.