Transfers give kids chance of a lifetime

By Keith Noel

The goodly Dr Lascelve Graham claims to have done "extensive" research on the issue of school transfers, so he must be aware of the genesis of the ISSA decisions. He should know that in some (long) years past, it was discovered that an ugly practice had developed in a few high schools where youngsters who were not qualified for, or had no real interest in, high school were 'recruited' into those schools primarily to represent them at football (and to a much lesser extent, track and field).

It was strongly suspected that some of these students hardly attended classes; did little, if any, academic work; and sometimes would not attend school for the rest of the year after the football or track and field season was over.

Dr Graham's research would have led him to the many rules regarding registration, attendance and academic performance, which have brought an end to this practice (although I admit that one or two individuals may still possibly slip through the cracks).

The second set of rules he would have discovered, were put in place to prevent the 'pirating' of students with sports talent by schools with ambitions to win at football, cricket or track and field that would lure these students from institutions with fledgling programmes. This is fairly difficult to do, especially if the students are doing well academically.

PARENTS' RIGHTS

Parents have argued, "If I may transfer my child to a different school because that school has a better economics programme or better physics labs, why can I not do so because the school has a better football programme or cricket facilities? The rest of his academic and social life will continue at his new school!"

In an effort not to infringe on parents' rights or to inhibit the students' progress, the educators at ISSA put rules in place to ensure that these transfers were kept in check, not eliminated. All that ISSA wished to ensure was that the students' academic and social development continued apace. This is their role as educators.

I am surprised at Dr Graham's conclusion that ISSA's efforts have been "pathetic, lame and ineffective". This can only be so if he projected his own objectives - to prevent all transfers for sports - on ISSA.

ISSA, for example, decided that a student who has qualified for sixth form is clearly one who is satisfying the academic purposes of school attendance, so they have no problems with these students transferring to facilitate their sporting ambitions.

This seems to anger Dr Graham, so he quotes his 'research', which shows that a number of boys who had played football for one school chose to go to another. These boys had qualified for sixth form, and if academics is, as he claims, the main thrust of school, he needs to say why ISSA should give a damn if a boy with six or seven CXC passes changes sixth form.

Dr Graham makes much of the fact that St Jago had athletes prevented from participating one year. He neglects to say that it was because ISSA's registration process is so stringent (to prevent the very thing he claims they are lax at) that a simple registration blunder caused St Jago to suffer. He gets his initial figure wrong (it was 11). He also ignores the fact that three of these students were sixth-formers - one was a student who had migrated and had returned to school - and the rest had been at the school for more than a year.

DISHONEST

However, Dr Graham is also, I regret to say, dishonest. In his response to my example of a student with cricket talent transferring from a school with no cricket programme, he speaks about children who cannot read or do simple math.

He suggests that if a child is academically deficient, he or she should be prevented from going to a school that would nurture a non-academic talent. The school with a cricket programme, he seems to be saying, would be unable (or unwilling) to help the lad learn to read or compute, while the one with no programme would be willing and able to do so.

Or maybe he thinks that the academically challenged should be penalised for their deficiency, or in old-fashioned anti-educational philosophy, they should be allowed to shine only if their academic deficiencies can be diagnosed and treated. If not, dog nyam dem supper (maybe literally).

I wish to point out that he states that his "extensive" research has "produced no educator who says that a child should be moved easily from school to school for academic reasons only". I can only conclude that his 'research' does not include reading The Gleaner!

Keith Noel is an educator. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and keithanoel@gmail.com.