THE PRIME Minister's call for a complete re-evaluation of Jamaica's education system is timely, as we have already pointed out, and there is ample evidence, clearly documented in recent months, that mere tinkering with the present arrangements will not work. Like a spider's web, each segment of the educational matrix is so interconnected that concentrating on one strand can compound problems in another which, in turn, can set off a chain reaction.
An example of such inter-connectivity arises even as there is growing consensus that the most immediate priority is early childhood education. To improve early childhood education calls for good teachers with the ability to speak both patois and standard English fluently, as well as the modern pedagogic skills not only for teaching writing, reading and numbers but to provide emotional support for their young charges.
The entry requirements for our teacher training colleges are so low, however, that the bright ambitious candidates who apply are the exception rather than the rule. It will be difficult to get the right calibre of young person into the system until teachers are competitively paid and teaching is seen as a profession whose members are proud to be licensed and jealous in protecting the teaching standards evidenced by that status.
The system needs to be examined as a whole and dealt with accordingly. The Prime Minister, and indeed our political leaders generally, have a penchant for setting up committees to defuse the pressure of public opinion on a particular issue. Such committees meet, eventually submit their reports, which routinely gather dust on a shelf.
A new Commission on Early Childhood Education has recently been established under the chairmanship of Dr. Samms-Vaughn, whose credentials are impressive, but it remains to be seen what powers the commission will be allowed to exercise in order to effect change. Mr. Patterson says the findings of the new committee will be submitted to the National Council on Education which itself has for many years been a citadel of slumber and silence. Only recently has it found its voice and has submitted far-ranging recommendations to the Minister of Education for reforming the education system, recommendations which themselves have been greeted by a loud silence.
The truth is that committees and commissions which only have power to recommend are not appropriate vehicles for urgent change. We are prepared to give the Prime Minister's new initiative the benefit of the doubt but we are not sanguine about its chances of success. We hope that the new committee will have representatives from the National Council on Education and the Early Childhood Commission so that the inputs of these two organisations can be a starting point without the necessity of reinventing the wheel.
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