Ruthlyn James | Assessment queue is new locked school gate

In Jamaica today, children are not just being excluded at the school gates, they are being excluded in the assessment queue. A child may be fully enrolled, with fees paid yet still be functionally locked out of learning.

This is not because the child is unwilling, but because the system increasingly requires proof of need before support is triggered and access to that proof is slow, costly and uneven.

Families are told, sometimes gently, sometimes bluntly;

“Come back with an assessment.”

“Come back with a diagnosis.”

“Come back when support is in place.”

What is rarely acknowledged is that the pathway to assessment is not neutral.

Public assessment capacity is limited; private assessments are costly and waiting periods often extend for months or even years. During that time, children are expected to function in classrooms that are not designed for their regulation needs, learning profiles, language development, or trauma exposure.

The queue filters children by income, geography, parental advocacy, time off work and access to private services. Those who can pay move forward. Those who cannot wait. Many disengage from school entirely while waiting. The queue itself has become a sorting mechanism. The problem is not assessment. Assessment is essential.

The problem is delay without protection.

Decades of international research confirm that early, responsive support is one of the strongest predictors of positive academic, behavioural and mental-health outcomes. Yet in Jamaica, intervention is often deferred until documentation is secured.

While children wait, behaviours escalate. Anxiety hardens. School refusal increases. Academic gaps widen. Teachers, working without adequate support, are forced into crisis management rather than instruction.

By the time many children are finally assessed, the presenting issue is no longer learning alone. It is emotional dysregulation, behavioural distress, family burnout and disengagement from school.

What began as a learning difference becomes a mental health concern, not because the child’s needs were complex, but because they were unmet for too long.

MENTAL HEALTH ABSORBS OVERFLOW

Jamaica’s child mental-health system is already under severe strain. Widely cited national estimates suggest that only about seven to eight per cent of children who need mental-health support are actually receiving it. Schools have therefore become the default holding space for unmet clinical need.

Teachers are not trained, staffed, or resourced to absorb this level of complexity alone. When upstream systems fail, classrooms feel it downstream; through suspensions, repeated referrals, absenteeism and emotional exhaustion among both staff and families.

We then label the child “difficult,” the parent “uncooperative,” and the teacher “uncaring,” without naming the structural failure connecting all three.

NARROW UNDERSTANDING

Part of the problem lies in how assessment itself is understood.

In practice, assessment has come to be treated as a gate-opening document rather than a planning tool. Too often, it is viewed as something that determines whether a child “qualifies” to be supported, instead of something that informs how a child should be taught.

This misunderstanding has contributed to an unhealthy fixation on intelligence testing, particularly IQ scores. The Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (KABC) is one of several tools used internationally to assess aspects of cognitive processing. Importantly, it was designed to reduce cultural and language bias and to focus on how a child processes information rather than what they have been taught.

However, even the KABC does not measure a child’s potential, worth, or capacity to learn in real-world classrooms. Like all cognitive assessments, it offers a snapshot under specific conditions. It does not account for trauma exposure, chronic stress, neurodivergent regulation profiles, sleep deprivation, anxiety, or environmental instability, all of which significantly affect performance.

Clinically, intelligence tests are descriptive, not predictive. They are tools for understanding learning styles and support needs, not verdicts on ability.

Yet in Jamaica, assessment results, particularly IQ-related scores, are too often treated as fixed labels. Children are quietly tracked, limited, or excluded based on numbers that were never intended to carry such weight.

NOT ACCOMMODATION

This leads to a second critical misunderstanding: the belief that assessment automatically equals accommodation. Assessment identifies needs. Accommodation responds to needs. They are related, but not interchangeable.

Inclusive education does not require that a child be fully assessed before reasonable classroom adjustments are made. Many accommodations: visual supports, flexible pacing, sensory breaks, alternative response formats, predictable routines are low cost and benefit a wide range of learners.

When accommodation is delayed until documentation arrives, children are denied support during the very period when they are most vulnerable.

Jamaica has committed, in principle, to inclusive education and reasonable arrangements for persons with disabilities. However, when the practical burden of access rests primarily on families’ ability to privately fund assessments, therapy and shadow support, inclusion becomes conditional. This is not an accusation against schools. Many are operating at the edge of capacity. It is an indictment of a system that has placed assessment ahead of access, rather than alongside protection.

QUIET NORMALISATION OF EXCLUSION

Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of this reality is how normal it has become.

• Children waiting years for assessment.

• Parents crowd funding support.

• Unregulated aides doing high-risk work without national standards.

• Students disappearing from attendance registers while still technically enrolled.

None of this is formally labelled exclusion, yet the outcome is the same.

The question is not whether children need assessment. The question is whether assessment should determine whether a child is allowed to learn.

Until Jamaica builds a shared, informed understanding of assessment, accommodation and inclusive practice and protects children while assessment is pending, the queue will continue to decide who progresses and who is quietly pushed aside.

Jamaica does not lack children ready to learn, it lacks a system ready to meet them where they are.

And until we dismantle the assessment queue as the new school gate, inclusion will remain a promise that too many families are still waiting to access.

Ruthlyn James is the founding director of Adonijah Group of Schools Therapy and Assessment Centre. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com