Lascelve Graham | Putting the cart before the horse

Recently, there have been renewed calls to do away with the placement exam for high school. It is asserted that this would be a big step in the move towards having a level playing field in education.

The placement exam is a way of identifying, on merit, those who are best prepared to utilise the opportunity offered by our best secondary schools ... those perceived as delivering quality education.

Although I am of the view that we must get rid of this quota system, this placement exam, I wonder if this is the right time, and if doing so now is not similar to putting the cart before the horse.

Countries that have made the paradigm shift in moving their public education systems from the bottom to the top took the steps necessary to improve the system first or simultaneously, with, for example, requiring community attendance at secondary schools. This seems to me to be much more reasonable.

The mission of our education system should be to deliver quality education (however defined ... definition will change with time) to all the children of Jamaica or at least to the overwhelming majority of our children. The placement exam is just the symptom of a deeper problem plaguing our education system. That is, the scant number of schools delivering quality education.

INEFFICIENT AND WASTEFUL

As long as the number of schools delivering quality education to our children is limited, relatively small, then, not having placement exams is just another, more inefficient, wasteful way of apportioning our scarce educational resources. It is just another way of deciding who enjoys the benefits concomitant with attending those few quality schools.

Focusing on that now strongly suggests that we are caught in the thick of thin things, operating at the fringes, doing things that will not fundamentally improve the educational experience of the vast majority of our students. It’s a mirage, a three-card trick. It won’t affect the price of butter. It won’t affect the price of tea in China, and it certainly won’t affect the delivery of quality education to the children of Jamaica. It’s just a shuffling of the pack, a cosmetic rearrangement. It will be more form than substance and will be of little or no significance, relevance to the great majority of Jamaican children.

They will continue to be disenfranchised, abused, robbed of the opportunity of a good education, by an education system that is failing them. The quota system will be intact, the elitism will remain and the apartheid education system will continue along its merry way. It will be business as usual! There have been hundreds of thousands of children whose futures have been blighted by the inadequacy of our education system through the years.

Our schools need to be delivering quality education throughout the nooks and crannies of Jamaica, or be well on the way to doing this, before it will be reasonable to do away with placement exams.

MULTITUDE OF BRIGHT CHILDREN

There is a multitude of bright children in the overwhelming majority of children who are now being thrown to the wolves, left behind by our education system, who just need the right school environment to excel or at least succeed. Let’s give them that!

We therefore need to focus on operationalising the essentials for the delivery of quality education. These include attracting the brightest and the best to teaching, paying them adequately, training them sufficiently and ensuring that our teacher quality is of the highest level. We also have to ensure that children come to the various levels of our education system prepared for that level. This means that we have to invest a lot more in early childhood education and socialisation. This will facilitate our youngsters being taught the pro-social values and attitudes the society requires, while at the same time developing their inquisitiveness and appetite for learning.

We will also have to ensure that the physical and technological environments are satisfactory. Our feeding programme needs expansion so that our children are not hungry while in school.

We need to make radical changes in education if we are to deliver quality education to all our children in a reasonable time. The arrival of that time will be clearly signalled by there being no need for placement exams for high schools, since most, if not all, our high schools will be delivering quality education.

Our education minister alone will not be able to drive the disruptive changes needed! The charge must come from, and be invigorated by, the top (prime minister). This will require us making education paramount, national priority number one!

Education affects everything we do, and hence is deserving of that status. However, this will demand sacrifice, some hard decisions and hence will require a revolutionary mindset, intellect, vision, political will, courage. Are our leaders up to the task? Or, is it above their pay range?

Dr Lascelve ‘Muggy’ Graham is former captain of the Jamaica national senior football team. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com