EDITORIAL - JTA: A failure of leadership

As a senior lecturer at Mico University College, Doran Dixon trains teachers. At least, that's what expected of him.

In the normal scheme of things, Mr Dixon would be expected to urge his students to be led by facts and to arrive at evidence-based conclusions.

When his propositions are challenged, Mr Dixon is expected to respond and sway his charges with the logic of his arguments. Ad hominem attacks should have no place in such discourse.

By this process, he would have helped teach students to sharpen their analytical and pedagogic skills.

We wonder!

Last week, unable to counter Ronald Thwaites' logic that overgenerous study leave and holidays for teachers were no longer affordable, Mr Dixon resorted to personal attacks. He referred to Mr Thwaites as a "mongrel dog".

We might have forgiven Mr Dixon's seeming lapse. Except that while we have may not have gone this far before, Mr Dixon has in the past given us cause to be impressed with his reasoning and logic on matters of education.

In 2009, he was president of the Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA) when the salaries of the members of the union were substantially adjusted to narrow the gap between themselves and workers in the private sector.

OPPOSING PERFORMANCE-BASED PAY

Mr Dixon, however, wouldn't countenance performance-based remuneration for teachers, insisting, almost, that no worthy method could be designed to take into account the difference in resources between schools.

"If we go that route (performance-based pay and teacher/school accountability), we are going to perpetuate a bad system," he said.

His presidency of the JTA yielded little that advanced education, unless he is proud of the fact that a mere 16 per cent of the students who enter high school pass five subjects, including English and maths, in the secondary-school exams by grade 11. Approximately a fifth of the cohort are out of school, without certification, by grade nine. Half of those who reach grade 11 are screened out of the exams.

KEEPING UP THE FIGHT

Paul Adams is both a predecessor and successor to Mr Dixon to the presidency of the JTA. He is the one who suggested that Mr Thwaites sounded like a man on cocaine for making it clear that the generous perks negotiated by teachers could no longer hold, and for opening the issue to public discussion.

Curiously, Mr Adams has been announced as the main speaker at a JTA parish association meeting in Trelawny later this week. We listen with interest for his pronouncements. On the evidence of the past, we expect little of value.

At the start of his second stint as the JTA president, he declared his wish for a better system that produced better-performing students with better outcomes.

Later, Mr Adams was vehemently against Mr Thwaites' predecessor as education minister, Andrew Holness, for his identification of 'failing schools' and an expressed intention to do something about the problem, up to closing these schools.

Mr Adams vowed to fight any such action.

This week, it emerged that of 205 schools reviewed by the National Education Inspectorate, 86, or 42 per cent of them, were hobbled by poor leadership and management. In nearly 70 per cent, student attainment was unsatisfactory.

Neither Mr Adams, Mr Dixon, nor the teacher union's current president, Clayton Hall, has offered a solution to these failings, which is the prime responsibility of its members.

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