Martin Henry LET'S DO tertiary education a really big favour and send them up an over supply of students ready for the business of higher education.
A recent study on 'private and social returns to investment in tertiary education in Jamaica', which was sponsored by a consortium of institutions in the sector, confirmed substantial returns to individuals and to society for investments in education. We knew that, but we didn't have a number.
What we also know is that a large number of potential investors are quite unprepared for benefiting from tertiary education. We also know too, that most of the 15 per cent or so of the population who now get access, have to be brought up to speed for higher education through costly remedial work.
This new study was prepared under the auspices of the U.N.D.P. Trinidad & Tobago/Surinam country office. Some years ago another UN agency, U.N.E.S.C.O., found that only 10 per cent of Jamaican secondary school graduates were passing four or more CXC subjects at the time. The basic minimum matriculation requirement set by many tertiary level institutions is five CXC passes.
At the presentation of the study, the man whose brainchild it was, pro-vice chancellor of the Uiversity of the West Indies, Professor Errol Morrison, spoke of education as an industry. A big chunk of this multi-billion dollar industry does what no other industry could get away with, constantly repairing a huge number of defective products, and not at the point at which the failure occurs, but further up the system at greater expense. .I have long wanted a costing of remediation to be done, like the estimate of private and social returns to investment in tertiary education which has now been done. However rough, the data would be useful, certainly for its shock effect.
AREAS OF DEFECT
Let me lend a small hand just by identifying some of those areas. Years ago when I was closely associated with community colleges, most of our work was tied to second chance remediation. If anything, the need is greater today. The teachers' colleges run a preliminary year to qualify students for the real college programme. The public universities run catch-up programmes in English and Mathematics.
The HEART Trust was established in part to rescue school-leavers who had not qualified for further study or for work. The Vocational Training Centres today, which recruit students at the grade nine level of education, not grade 11 or CXC level, although a candidate must be 17 to apply and therefore would be old enough to be a high school graduate, still have to run remedial English and Math programmes just to get enough 'qualified' people to fill vacancies.
There is a massive private sector industry, with which I am familiar firsthand as the former director of an adult evening school, for fixing the basics for entry into tertiary education and for academic qualifications for jobs.
And we haven't said anything yet about primary level and secondary level remediation. The Grade Four Literacy Test has been picking up the need for large-scale remedial work, also the end of primary Grade Six Achievement Test, which has rapidly settled into being just another placement exam like the old Common Entrance, has been diagnosing major weaknesses in the fundamentals of English and Mathematics. Students, however, are passed on to the secondary level anyway.
There is no systematic national programme to flush out illiteracy at grade seven, the first year of the secondary level. We just pass it on. The Minister of Finance, in another forum, said "This is madness!" , but he keeps paying for it, which is even greater madness!
CORRECT THE PROBLEM
The Minister of Education has demonstrated a keen understanding of what needs to be done. Let's do it. One of the methodological weaknesses of the study on the returns to investment in tertiary education, was the failure to disaggregate 'tertiary returns' from the contributions of primary and secondary. As I have been hammering for a little while, absolutely the highest returns from investments in education come at the base level of literacy.
A great deal has been made about avoiding elitism in access to tertiary education by holding down cost-sharing. The greatest injustice to the poor over access to higher education actually takes place years before when they disproportionately fail to gain literacy skills by the end of primary school. Edwin Allen's famous seventy to thirty ratio of Common Entrance Exam places from primary schools vis a vis prep schools, became a permanent response to this soaking of the poor.
The political, economic and academic muscle of the terminal sector of the education system has tended to be deployed to frame the issue in terms of financing for tertiary education. We must break out of that unduly narrow and constrictive frame. The Minister has quite correctly kept calling in every forum in which she speaks for a clear philosophy of education. A win-win-win philosophy for all must begin with a commitment to full, multi-dimensional literacy for all Jamaican children by age 12, comprehensive literacy as a foundation for life skills as citizen, as a base for further learning, and as the starting point in preparation for productive work.
Martin Henry is a communication specialist.
