Editorial | PEP in time of crisis

Six days from now, nearly 40,000 Jamaican children, between the ages of 12 and 13, will begin a week of exams to determine their preparedness for secondary education. These students are now in grade six of the primary school system.

The Primary Exit Profile (PEP), as these exams are called, will fundamentally achieve two things, which are not its primary aim. PEP will reconfirm the crisis in primary education in Jamaica – and in education more broadly – and lay bare again the urgency for reform.

More specifically – with perhaps small variations on these projections – when the results emerge about a third of these students won’t meet the proficiency standard in language arts. That is, between 12,000 and 13,000 students will be shown not to read and comprehend in English – the language of instruction in Jamaica’s schools – at their age and grade level.

Around seven per cent of those who don’t meet the proficiency bar will be categorised as being at the beginners stage, thus requiring extensive interventions before the start of the next school year, if they are to have any realistic chance of being able to absorb the basics of secondary learning when they enter grade seven.

If children can’t read and comprehend in the language in which they are being taught, it won’t be surprising that 4 out of 10 of the PEP students won’t satisfy the criteria for proficiency in mathematics. That is between 14,000 and 16,000 students, of which nearly 3,000 will be at a stage as if they were just starting the subject.

There will be, to a lesser or greater degree, similar outcomes in science and social studies.

The corollary to the PEP results will be a reaffirmation of what ought to be the critical mission for the education minister, Dana Morris Dixon, which, if she pursues it, will need robust national support.

Ensuring that every student is capable of reading, writing, comprehending and doing sums at his or her age and grade level must become the absorbing mission of primary schools. Which is not to say that other things can’t or won’t be done, but there must be clarity about the mission.

CRISIS OF READING

Put another way, this is an acceptance that a large part of Jamaica’s crisis in education is a crisis of reading.

When PEP was fully introduced in 2019, replacing the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT), its aim was to develop students who were capable of critical thinking, solutions-oriented and were effective communicators with the ability to cooperate. Which, essentially, was what GSAT, which replaced the old Common Entrance, was intended to achieve. Learning by rote was to be out.

Over nearly three decades and two exam changes, not much has changed with respect to education outcomes. After six years of primary education, a third of students still leave illiterate. Yet, children who can’t read are being asked to understand isosceles triangles.

At the secondary level, a fifth of students who sit the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) exams fail at English, and over 6 in 10 fail at maths. Last year only 14 per cent of Jamaican students passed five subjects at a single sitting in the CSEC exams, with those subjects including English and maths.

Additionally, less than 30 per cent of Jamaicans of the relative cohort are in tertiary education and nearly 70 per cent of the island’s workers have no specific training for the jobs they do.

These statistics suggest that Jamaica faces a national education emergency, which Prime Minister Andrew Holness established the Patterson Commission four years ago to recommend fixes. Unfortunately, the administration hasn’t facilitated the robust national discussion on Patterson’s findings and recommendations as was hoped for.

CHALLENGE AND OPPORTUNITY

Dr Morris Dixon, who has been education minister for fewer than four months, has both a great challenge and great opportunity, which are complicated by the fact that general elections are due before the end of this year. She faces the possibility of anything she does being politicised.

Nonetheless, with a problem as big as she confronts, Dr Morris Dixon has to be prepared to take risks. In doing so the minister must be open and transparent. She has to be willing to, with frankness, engage education stakeholders, which means all Jamaicans.

She is right about the need to address the issues that affect the early childhood sector, where privately owned, community-based schools are woefully short of resources, including trained teachers and caregivers. But as the minister does that, the crisis of reading in primary schools, which transitions to the secondary system, insists on urgent attention.

In other words, the reading crisis must be treated as a national emergency, deserving of national mobilisation similar to the JAMAL movement of the 1970s when Jamaicans of all social classes were motivated to teach illiterate adults to read.

In this regard, Dr Morris Dixon possesses obvious strengths, not least her grasp of the complexities of the education problem. And, importantly, she has goodwill.

The question is her willingness to fight. She is likely to contend with entrenched bureaucracy, unaccustomed to moving with dispatch, and perhaps unconvinced of the need for a reordering of priorities and resources.

The solution: establish transparent priorities and full and frank engagement with all stakeholders, including the political Opposition.