School scramble - Door closes on kids
Published:Monday | June 21, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Gary Spaulding, Senior Gleaner Writer
A spate of tear-jerking disappointments has beset hundreds of parents of six-year-old students who are poised to enter the primary-school system but have been shut out of high-ranking public institutions.
There are indications that the experience has been equally heart-rending for school administrators who are forced to turn away parents and their young ones.
"Parents should not have to be facing this kind of ordeal to getting their children into schools," an irate parent declared. "It come in like politics and the workforce: if you nuh know someone, you can't get through."
Ministry sources say Education Minister Andrew Holness will be fielding questions on this and other issues - including grouses over the controversial placement of students who sat the Grade Six Achievement Test into low-ranked public schools - at a press conference tomorrow.
For some parents, the experiences at the lower end of the primary system are much worse than the challenges being faced at the upper transition point.
Most primary schools have already accepted applications and made selections for the 2010-11 academic year.
Educators told The Gleaner that the competition for primary-school spaces has heightened in recent years, as job losses caused by the tight economic environment have forced many to relocate their children from private (preparatory) schools.
A mother disclosed that she applied to Excelsior Primary School, St George's Girls' School and Mico Practising, without success.
"I know parents who have gone to four and did not get through to any," she said.
The mother said a "good Samaritan" helped her daughter access a spot at Alpha Primary.
"Someone from the church that my daughter attends knows the former principal, who knows the current principal, and that is how we got through," she disclosed.
"This is more than traumatic. This is terrible. And I don't think this should be going on," the mother vented, as her young daughter skipped innocently at her feet.
"If you don't have an older child going to a school, then your child cannot get into the school and them thing there."
Principal of Dunrobin Primary School, Robert Gillies, told The Gleaner that his institution has places for approximately 195 students at the grade-one level each year.
However, Gillies said he has received written applications from nearly 500 parents, while another 500 made verbal enquiries.
The headmaster told The Gleaner that in order to ensure that the process was administered fairly, a committee has been set up to examine the applications and was guided by specific requirements.
He said a primary requirement is proximity to the Dunrobin Avenue-based institution.
One parent said she had to wait in line for hours just to get an application form at Dunrobin as hundreds of parents descended on the institution.
Other schools which are targeted by parents employ a feeder system to ensure fairness in the selection process.
St Peter Claver Primary is one such institution to which basic schools and other early-childhood centres dispatch names of their six-year-old students.
Notwithstanding, principal Karen Jackson-Reynolds said she has her hands full each year, as desperate parents go in search of high-performance primary schools.
Educators said, numerically, there were adequate places for all primary-school starters, but parents baulked at the prospect of sending their youngsters into danger zones where violence flares up without warning.
St Peter Claver, located on Waltham Park, and St Richard's, situated on Red Hills Road, have done well in shrugging off the effects of violence around them to produce high-performing students.
Parents often target institutions which have exceptional records at the grade-four literacy and numeracy and GSAT levels.
Many inner-city schools have a history of low mastery in the nationwide grade-four tests, largely due to infrastructural deficiencies, violence, and a larger-than-ideal pool of low-performing students.