'Government must take charge of early childhood education!'

Gary Spaulding, Senior Gleaner Writer

THE STATE must assume full responsibility for the vast number of early childhood institutions islandwide. That was the near unanimous position among guests at Thursday's Gleaner Editors' Forum, except for one discordant voice among the panel citing an area of concern.

"The fact of the matter is, this is the model we want to hold up," said former Prime Minister and University of Technology Chancellor Edward Seaga in reference to proposals for a government-funded early childhood sector.

Ruel Reid, special adviser to the minister of education and principal of Jamaica College, lamented, however: "We now have a consensus that we want this to happen, but we are at such a bad place."

Reid said the woes that had beset early childhood education couldbe attributed to the failure of successive governments to assume responsibility for that sector.

He noted that traditionally, it was churches which had claimed responsibility for early childhood education.

"Mass education was never something that the Government had owned initially. It was localised to churches and other organisations," Reid argued.

use cuba's model

He wants local planners to take a leaf out of the state-operated Cuban model on early childhood education.

"The (Jamaican) Government has never taken over early childhood, which is the key variable in all of this ... . Up to now, they have not taken them over."

Reid said the quality of persons in early childhood education - the foundation level - was the least qualified.

To add to the misery, Reid said the level of remuneration accorded to early childhood professionals has been "abominably low".

Accordingly, Reid contended that the blame must be placed squarely on the shoulders of the system, not the teachers.

Seaga pointed to a conspicuous quality gap between infant and basic schools.

Seaga asserted that both the teaching and results from infant schools are far better than in the basic schools.

Businessman Dr Ralph Thompson, who has done significant research on Jamaica's education system, proposed a mandatory programme which ensures that trainee teachers spend an entire year in early childhood institutions before being eligible for their degree.

"My suggestion is that after you finish the teacher training, you must compulsorily go to an early childhood school to qualify for your degree," Thompson said. "If you don't want the degree, then you don't go."

He said it was not enough that a second-year trainee teacher is sent merely to help out at early childhood institutions.

"They need to go straight through the teachers' colleges and then do one full year at an early childhood institution," he said.

"If we are going to get results, we have to begin there," declared early childhood specialist Fay Carothers.

gary.spaulding@gleaner.com