Heed Ronnie's 'call to action'

Ian Boyne, Contributor

The leadership of the Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA) must resist the temptation to reflexively resist the "call to action" made this past week by Education Minister Ronnie Thwaites to shake up the messy entitlements system. Anything less would be an unforgivable dereliction of leadership.

The system cannot be defended, and civil society must make its voice heard on this one. Reform to the entitlements system in education - indeed, in the entire public sector - is long overdue. The Public Sector Transformation Unit has for some time documented the absurd leave and other entitlement benefits of public servants and their costliness to taxpayers. We should not have to wait on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to tell us to scrap these productivity-draining entitlements.

How can we, in the 21st century, justify long leave of four months with pay after every five years of service and 52 days' leave on full pay for teachers employed before September 2003, in addition to the long school holidays? A teacher after only two years of service entitled to one year fully paid study leave? And then up to another full year without pay?

The result of this is that $574 million is owed to schools for substitute teachers. The cost of study and vacation leave to Government - meaning to you and me as taxpayers - is $2.5 billion annually. This is madness!

Who outside of the JTA could possibly be tempted to support the continuation of this ripoff? And even well-thinking, sober persons within the JTA must sense instinctively that something is wrong. Under the outdated 1980 Education Code, a teacher who performs satisfactorily for one year in a clear vacancy becomes eligible for tenure. Tenure in well-functioning educational systems is not so easy.

It might be seen as insensitive to discuss these things on the eve of Labour Day and during Workers' Week. But workers have to understand that unreasonable and unsustainable demands, when met, hurt them eventually. The Jamaican State has lost its sovereignty and has little bargaining power with the IMF because of past reckless and thoughtless polices, including labour policies (among other things) This has nothing to do with any anti-worker sentiments.

INTER-GENERATIONAL THEFT

It makes no sense pushing for certain worker benefits which harm your economy, negatively affect productivity and fuel inflation and debt which penalise future generations. It's intergenerational theft.

I don't want to make out that teachers are the source of our problems in education. I can't tell you the number of times in the 26 years I have hosted the television programme 'Profile' that high-achieving, brilliant people who came from dirt-poor circumstances told me of how they were rescued, absolutely saved, by teachers when there were no parents or guardians able to help, or many times were not even around.

I know the positive role teachers have played in many students' lives. I would never want any teacher reading this to become offended or hurt by anything I say. I do care how they feel. I honour them. I am sensitive to teachers, for I know how much they bear and how they are often scapegoats for politicians' excesses, incompetence and mismanagement. But there are some compelling things we must reckon with.

The education minister has been emphasising that the problem with education is not just money. This has been proven in other countries, including the United States, where the per-capita spend on education is high but educational outcomes are disappointing. It is not how much money is thrown at education. It is how efficiently the system is organised and run and how teaching is delivered.

We are spending $75 billion on education - $55 billion of which is for remuneration. We must do something about that mix. In an article in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs ('Why American Education Fails'), Jal Mehta, who teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, focuses on teachers, saying: "Any attempt to reform American education would have to start with attracting better teachers, retaining them and helping them develop their practice."

ENTERING THE PROFESSION

He notes that international research shows that the best-performing school systems draw their teachers from the top-third college graduates, while lower-ranking school system do not. In Finland, which has a model education system, teaching is the single most preferred career for 15-year-olds. Only one in 10 applicants in Finland is accepted in teacher-training programmes. In Singapore, the ratio is one in eight. In Jamaica, we are graduating 2,000 teachers every year, with large numbers of them not able to find work.

And Thwaites' proposal that tenure should not come as easy as it is in our system is supported by American teachers' unions. In the past year, America's two largest teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, as well as the Council of Chief State School Officers, have released reports which advocate raising the bar for entry into the teaching profession.

The proposals call for prospective teachers to start out with provisional status for their first several years. "Tenure would no longer be an expected and near-immediate step, but would become an accomplishment similar to getting tenure at a university or making partner at a law firm. These changes have the potential to remake the whole field: If it became harder to become a teacher, respect for the profession would grow and schools might start to show better results," Professor Mehta says in his article.

I believe Ronnie Thwaites is on the path to becoming our effective and revolutionary education minister. He has the breadth of intellectual sophistication and exposure, common sense, practical wisdom, courage, a Teutonic work ethic and communications skills to make him noteworthy. His Sectoral Debate presentation last week showed his mastery of his portfolio.

PLAIN TRUTH

First, he was honest and blunt about the state
of education. There was no fudging. After noting that only 50 per cent
of those students who make it to grade 11 are entered for five subjects
and that of those who take CSEC, only 52 per cent passed English and a
paltry 38 per cent maths, he said:

"Approximately 50
per cent of the cohort, or 22,000, leave with a certificate of
attendance and a pretty picture of cap and gown. They are not certified
for work. Most knock on the doors of HEART institutes where 75 per cent
cannot be admitted because their literacy and numeracy do not reach the
modest grade-nine level." Now that is plain talking by an education
minister! He was not done: "This is a disastrous situation. We must not
hide from it. This is a call to
action."

And what is he doing?
Well, after all the talk from successive administrations about the
importance of early childhood and special education, up to recently,
that was getting only three per cent of educational resources. I was
stunned when I first learned this. For I had heard so much
acknowledgment of how crucial early childhood education
was.

Well, Ronnie is doing something about that. This
year, the ministry's expenditure on early childhood and special
education is 14.6 per cent, or $11 billion. Thwaites is tackling
learning problems in children with special education needs who have
traditionally been thrown on the education rubbish
heap.

This year, his ministry will train about 400
teachers to diagnose cognitive, social and personal challenges. "Special
education must become a respected professional career path," he said in
his compelling Sectoral presentation last week. He also pledged to
reverse the inequity in pay to qualified early childhood education
teachers.

In primary education, he revealed that 40
per cent of the education budget sustains 795 primary schools. But more
than 200 of these are significantly underpopulated and hence
overstaffed. Then he disclosed the shocking fact that there are 79,000
unused public-school student places from early childhood to the
secondary level, equivalent to 79 schools. "There are even a few country
schools with almost as many teachers and students," while about 70
schools are at the other end of the extreme.

Thwaites
said regional directors and principals have determined that "in a large
number of our schools", there are more teachers than there ought to be -
at least 1,200 of them, costing billions of dollars in compensation
each year. The schoolroom is not a social welfare agency! Let us not be
sentimental about it. (I am also convinced there are other areas in the
public sector which can be cut without any impact on efficiency, but the
Government is too timid to contemplate it.)

We have
to recognise during this Workers' Week that overstaffing is a drain on
the public purse and ends up hurting the poor and "most vulnerable".
Thwaites' call to action in terms of dealing with waste and
inefficiencies should be taken up by other
ministers.

REFRESHING APPROACH

But
quite aside from the technical and procedural reforms which the
education minister is steering, there is a holistic approach that he
brings to his portfolio that is as refreshing as it is commanding. This
goes to the intellectual breadth of the man, his strong Jesuit
influence, and his rigorous philosophical exposure.

He
recognises that education reform cannot be done in a vacuum, but has to
take place in a context of reformed values and attitudes. Those who
don't understand say he is too preachy. Last week, he spoke about
absentee parents, "family looseness", saying, "Despite the acute
sensitivity, we have to talk straight to ourselves about casual
childbearing."

Then he made a strong call for values
and attitudes, urging the Church to re-engage the education system.
There are certain values which are fundamental, Thwaites said.
"Responsibility for self - not dependency and leggobeast. Love for
neighbour - not selfishness and greed. Acceptance of self - not
bleaching and exhibitionism. The joy of faithful and loving
relationships - not careless breeding, casual sex and broken lives. The
value of effort and work-not entitlement, idleness, complacency and
under productivity. And simplicity and creativity - not extravagance and
bling."

Thwaites is the right man for the right job
at the right time.

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist.
Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and
ianboyne1@yahoo.com.