The merits of school zoning

The Editor, Sir:

The points raised by Phillip Chambers in his Letter of the Day in The Gleaner of Friday June 25 need to be addressed.

First of all, when he writes "the system of zoning pupils based on home address is sociologically and psychologically demeaning and must be scrapped immediately," he implies that we have a system of zoning in Jamaica at present. He continues by asserting that such a system is "sociologically and psychologically demeaning". Can it be more demeaning than having a child stand outside the gates of one school near to his home waiting for public transport to go to school some distance away because the system tells him that he is not good enough to attend the school near to his home?

I just heard of a case in Mandeville this very year, where a parent who lives there had one of a pair of identical twins placed at a 'brand-name' school in Mandeville, while the other one is to be sent out of town to another school. So the system is making it more difficult for the weaker student to get an education by sending her a much greater distance to what is rightly or wrongly perceived to be an inferior school. The only thing I know of that one might use to reasonably label it as inferior is that it is a shift school, where the students get fewer contact hours with teachers.

If we are going to place children according to ability, it would be far more logical to give the stronger student fewer contact hours than the weaker one and send the weaker one to the nearer school where he could be monitored and supervised more effectively by the parent.

The only purpose that will be achieved by the way they are now being placed is a strengthening of the perception that one school is superior to the other. It is likely that five years from now when they both take the CSEC exams, the one attending the brand-name school will outperform the one at the other school, and the teachers at each school will be held accountable for their results.

In his last paragraph, he made a useful analogy with sports. One of the first things that the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) did was to limit the way students could be recruited from other schools. Formerly, when a student at the non-traditional school showed talent in sports, he or she was recruited by the traditional high school. This is what lifted the performance of the non-traditional high schools at Champs and other competitions.

Good foundation

There is no reason to think that Asafa Powell, Usain Bolt and Nesta Carter would have done any better had they gone to any of the top sports schools. The only one from the Beijing quartet that did was Michael Frater.

If we look at the results of the top students at most non-traditional schools, we will see that they perform at a level on par with the better students at the traditional high schools, even when some of them started out with lower GSAT grades. There is no reason to believe that other students with a good foundation and parental support would not do the same, and better, at these schools if they live close to them and are sent there.

You are quite right when you say that we must follow the example of ISSA, and as you say in your last sentence: "All it takes is the will to replicate this success in the area of academics."

I am, etc.,

R. HOWARD THOMPSON

roi_ane@hotmail.com

Mandeville, Manchester