Editorial | Cheering for Trinity High

The Roman Catholic Church and the leadership of Holy Trinity High School in Kingston get it: “It’s reading, stupid!”

So, with the backing of the education ministry, they are turning on its head, or implementing the other way round, the Government’s so-called Pathway Programme. Because it makes little sense keeping children in school two years longer, supposedly to either matriculate to higher education or to learn a skill, if at age 18 they still struggle to read a primer, or to do basic sums.

With 99 per cent of its students entering grade seven reading several grades below their grade and age levels, Holy Trinity High’s solution is to shelve the government-approved curriculum and spend the time and effort, with the aid of proven intervention techniques, to, over at least a school year, bring the literacy levels of these children up to par.

Roman Catholic-owned Holy Trinity High School is calling the experiment its Grade Seven Academy.

The Gleaner is confident it will be successful, which will mean another intervention is available for scaling-up to address the literacy crisis in the country’s education system, which now sees approximately one-third of Jamaican students completing primary school, at around age 12, unable to read and comprehend at their age and grade levels.

MISSISSIPPI MODEL

Our confidence rests on the fact that at least three of four critical legs for success are in place. First, apart from the Roman Catholic Church’s commitment to the initiative, the project is in the charge of two of Jamaica’s finest educators and education administrators, Grace Baston and Faith Alexander. The former recently retired as principal of Campion College, Jamaica’s top high school, and Dr Alexander was lately CEO of the Transformation Unit in the education ministry.

Second, Dr Alexander brings unique insights to the project. This newspaper has long been touting the success of several lagging southern US states in lifting the reading/literacy standards of elementary school students, which has translated to generally improved educational outcomes.

We have highlighted especially the so-called Mississippi Miracle. In 2013, the state’s fourth-grade students ranked 49th in reading among America’s 50 states. In 2024 they were fourth.

We were previously ignorant of the fact that not only did Dr Alexander work next door in Louisiana, but she had helped to conceptualise and implement that state’s literacy intervention programme, with elements similar to the Mississippi model, which includes halting the conveyor that transports children from grade to grade, no matter their reading or maths skills; introducing new teaching techniques and software; and anchoring the programme in state legislation.

Mississippi is a good model for Jamaica, Dr Alexander said, because of the similarity in demographics, with respect to poverty and children struggling with literacy and numeracy.

FOOD INSECURITY, CRITICAL COMPONENT

The third plank of our confidence is the presence of Dr Dana Morris Dixon as the education minister and the fact that she has apparently placed her imprimatur on the initiative. Our sense is that she gets the crisis in education, that a critical element in its reform is reading, and that the matter is urgent.

The Gleaner’s concern, however, is the food and nutritional status of the students at Holy Trinity, the project’s critical fourth leg.

For as Dr Morris Dixon observed in delivering the Archbishop Samuel Carter Lecture at Campion College last month, “learning while hungry is extremely difficult”.

Most of the children who attend Holy Trinity are from poor, inner-city families that are food-insecure.

Indeed, a United Nations report last month on food security and nutrition in Latin American and the Caribbean showed that 55 per cent of Jamaicans are food-insecure. For 26.6 per of the population, they are severely so. Food insecurity in Jamaica was 5.3 percentage points higher than for its Caribbean peers.

“Addressing food insecurity is a critical component of any strategy aimed at attaining equity in our education system,” Dr Morris Dixon said in her lecture presentation. “Many studies show that brain development in the early years is linked to nutrition. We also know that concentration, and even behaviour, is affected by nutrition and, in turn, if you don’t have adequate nutrition, it can lead to subpar learning outcomes.”

NUTRITIONAL SUPPORT

This issue of food and nutrition for students that so exercises the education minister was of similar urgency three decades ago.

A 1998 analysis in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition on school feeding in Jamaica said: “ The provision of breakfast to Jamaican schoolchildren in grade 7 for one semester resulted in higher school attendance and greater achievement in arithmetic. One reason for low school attendance is poverty; children in Jamaica often attend school with a lunch or money to purchase lunch, and if neither is available, they may be kept at home. It is therefore plausible that the provision of meals encourages children to attend school more regularly. The children who received the school breakfast did not gain weight during the semester. The results of additional statistical analyses indicate that, with improved school attendance controlled for, the gains in arithmetic were still significant. The implication is that the provision of the meal resulted in improved scholastic achievement, which was independent of school attendance and weight gain. It was therefore hypothesised that the alleviation of hunger during school hours was a valid reason for the improvement in arithmetic.”

Clearly, not much has changed.

Dr Morris Dixon has J$8.98 billion in her ministry’s budget for nutritional support this fiscal year, or approximately 10 per cent more than for-2024-25. The allocation is around five per cent of the ministry’s overall budget.

The question is whether what is available is sufficient for the needs, or if Minister Morris Dixon may have to reconfigure some priorities.