Ruthlyn James | When good students look bad on paper

At first glance, the Jamaican high-school report appears straightforward. It lists grades, subject averages, attendance, conduct, order marks and class position. It looks objective. It looks comprehensive. But, from a developmental standpoint, the school report is doing far more than recording learning. It is constructing a narrative about the child.

The concern is not that schools are monitoring behaviour. Structure and expectations are necessary. The concern is that multiple developmental domains are being collapsed into a single moral storyline about effort and character. When academic mastery, executive functioning, emotional regulation and attendance patterns are all interpreted through the same behavioural lens, the system risks misreading children who are already working at the edge of their capacity.

Today’s classrooms are managing far more complexity than the system was originally designed to hold. Yet, the architecture of the high-school report remains largely unchanged, reflecting an era when uniformity was equated with readiness and quiet compliance was treated as competence.

WHEN BEHAVIOUR IS MISTAKEN FOR CHARACTER

From a deeper developmental perspective, repeated comments such as needs more focus, requires greater application, lacks organisation or shows limited interest, are not simply academic feedback. They are potential clinical flags. They may indicate executive functioning strain, attentional differences, anxiety-driven avoidance, depressive flattening, sleep disruption, chronic stress or untreated learning challenges.

When these signals are recorded repeatedly without triggering support, the report begins to function less as guidance and more as reputational damage. Over time, many adolescents internalise this narrative. They begin to see themselves as the description inked on the report card, increasing the risk of disengagement, avoidance and oppositional responses.

PROBLEM WITH RANKING CULTURE

Class position and form rank remain deeply embedded in Jamaica’s secondary achievement culture. Ranking is often defended as motivation and merit. Yet, modern child development research paints a more complicated picture.

Ranking assumes that students begin at similar developmental starting points, process information at comparable speeds, and regulate stress with similar efficiency. In reality, adolescents vary widely in executive functioning maturity, emotional regulation capacity, sleep patterns, mental health stability and cognitive processing style.

Students who process information more slowly, who require repetition or who experience anxiety under timed conditions are structurally disadvantaged by rank-based systems, even when their conceptual understanding is strong. The system privileges speed and performance under pressure rather than depth, strategy and growth.

Research has also linked highly competitive academic environments to increased student stress and anxiety. Adolescents who are repeatedly positioned near the lower end of ranking hierarchies are at greater risk of disengagement and depressive thinking patterns. Ranking can become not simply a measure of performance but a psychological label that may shape self-perception over time.

Importantly, ranking also obscures environmental inequities. Access to tutoring, stable home routines, emotional support and financial resources significantly influence outcomes. Yet, rank presents performance as if it were purely individual merit, stripped of context.

This system works most seamlessly for students who are neurotypical, externally regulated, socially aligned with school culture and supported at home in conventional ways. Their success is real, but it is also amplified by structures designed around their profiles. The students who struggle most are often neurodivergent learners, including those with ADHD, autism and specific learning disorders.

READING WARNING SIGNS DIFFERENTLY

High-school reports frequently contain clusters of indicators that warrant closer review. Patterns of lateness, fluctuating performance, repeated comments about focus and organisation and declining engagement are not merely disciplinary data points. They are early warning signals.

When schools respond primarily with demerits, conduct downgrades or exclusionary discipline, they may inadvertently escalate the very behaviours they are trying to suppress. Adolescents who feel chronically unsuccessful or misunderstood often shift into avoidance, withdrawal or oppositional coping.

This means that behaviour must be interpreted through a developmental lens. Regulation is a skill that matures unevenly across adolescence. Executive functioning continues developing well into the early 20s, and mental health vulnerability peaks during the secondary school years. A system that recognises these realities is more likely to intervene early and effectively.

Structure and boundaries remain essential. Schools cannot function without expectations. But discipline divorced from developmental understanding becomes punitive rather than formative. Behaviour should be interpreted as data, signals about regulation, context and support needs, not as moral verdicts.

Achievement systems can evolve. Conduct reporting can become developmentally anchored rather than globally scored. Behavioural patterns can trigger support planning instead of reputational damage. Teachers can be supported to distinguish defiance from dysregulation and disengagement from overwhelm. Ranking systems can be recalibrated to emphasise mastery benchmarks and growth indices rather than comparative position.

QUESTION OF ALIGNMENT

Jamaica’s Vision 2030 commits to developing the potential of every child. That cannot coexist comfortably with achievement systems that continue to equate compliance with competence.

A report card is a developmental message to the child and the family. When we place rank beside conduct and treat both as indicators of worth, we risk mislabelling capable adolescents whose regulatory systems are still maturing under significant pressure.

The question before the Jamaican high-school system is not whether standards should remain high. Standards matter. Structure matters. Accountability matters.

The deeper question is whether our measurement tools have kept pace with what modern child development science now makes clear.

Until they do, many of our most capable but differently wired learners will continue to be misunderstood, and the system will continue to call it discipline when it is, in fact, a signal for support.

Ruthlyn James is the founding director of Adonijah Group of Schools Therapy and Assessment Centre. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.