Ronald Thwaites| Productivity and literacy

I appreciate Prime Minister Holness’ exhortation at the Wisynco function last week for the nation to craft a surge or productivity higher than the rate of inflation. For, if we don’t, the fate of the majority will be to tread water at best or, more likely, to experience personal recession, discontent and continuing social distress.

But, how do you get total factor productivity ahead of post-Hurricane Melissa-bloated inflation when fully half of the workforce is either functionally illiterate, unskilled or behaviourally inept? Or when the financial sector is constipated and there is a state bureaucracy for whom reward and output are seldom connected?

Removing these structural impediments to prosperity cannot continue to be postponed, especially given an increasingly hostile international environment. Traditional escape routes are narrowing. There are things which we are in a position to do – if we choose.

Take education first. Next to the capricious taking of life which we practise routinely, and the normalising of brittle family structures in a culture which is conditioned more and more to see humans as expendable, the robbing of up to one-half of our children of adequate education is the worst societal sin.

The really serious reform recommendations in the five-year-old Patterson Report have not even been discussed by the lawmakers or the majority of teachers. We can’t even get the mild Jamaica Teaching Council Bill into law.

Limited measures to improve literacy and numeracy are being overwhelmed by the rebuilding imperative. While understandable, as Damion Crawford correctly reminds us, irreversible learning loss is taking place. Unprepared students are still being treated like the ‘Children of Sisyphus’.

The reading skills of youngsters entering Grade 7 last September were no better, and often lower, than entrants the year before. How does that bode for productivity? While some schools are making heroic efforts to redress this general condition, the national effort is far from sufficient. It’s like giving aspirin to a Stage 4 cancer patient and consoling yourself that you have administered a cure. There may be marginal relief, which will be exhaustively publicised, but the tumours will continue growing.

SUMMER TERM

To begin to catch up from Hurricane Melissa, we need a summer term this year for all schools, and definitely for those in the western parishes. A calcified Education Code and unmotivated teachers will prevent this. Slimming down the Primary Exit Profile exams to multiple choice questions will not properly test functional literacy. Regular writing and reading aloud will help. Where is the value-rich pedagogy in the National Standard Curriculum for seriously misaligned students anyway?

HEART levels one and two ought to be achieved before leaving high school, with higher accreditation being attained through supervised apprenticeship.

Let go of the boast of getting eight and 10 CSEC or City & Guilds passes. In any event, be truthful that a Grade 3 CSEC pass indicates the most limited competence, hardly a platform for a productive future. The same goes for equivalent City & Guilds certification.

Better for the society to uncompromisingly demand that quality standards of literacy, numeracy, information technology and a marketable skill be the requirements for graduation from high school. Combined with habits of respect and self-discipline, this goal would be solid ground for an increasingly productive workforce.

So, what prevents this? The present training and contractual arrangements with teachers do. No political administration has the guts to require teachers, who are paid by taxpayers 12 months of the year, to do the work in the summer to properly prepare and test students whose learning opportunities have been diminished. So, the patently obvious corrective action will not take place.

The weak will continue to waste time, suffer learning regression and emerge with low prospects of contributing to productivity levels higher than inflation. Other families with presence of mind and some cash will invest in private tutoring. This is the best expenditure they will ever make. As a society, we perpetuate our own dystopia.

CREDIT?

I know farmers who are really striving to replant their crops or restore their livestock inventories. Except for the wealthiest, credit for agriculture from the formal financial sector continues to be virtually impossible. Countless farmers will miss two planting cycles waiting on an affiliated financial institution to process a modest-size loan.

Our broken social contract undermines trust. The ugly progeny of mistrust is suffocating bureaucracy. A greater measure of food security and less miserable export earnings are the casualties while money flows to buy old cars, and support gambling and its half-sister scamming.

EFFICIENT SPENDING

In short, public money is not being spent effectively on the things which can advance productivity. This is the last month in which budget alterations will be entertained for fiscal 2026-2027. Does the Government have the vision, the credibility and the political will to lead in new directions?

And, who is genuinely committed to heed Peter Garth’s message last week about eliminating partisan fractiousness so that systemic change can occur? Andrew Holness says he supports the objective. The behaviour of his political administration, however, still indicates their delusion that, by themselves, they can stimulate high national productivity post-Hurricane Melissa. Pity us!

REAL REBUILDING

The project to replant hundreds of thousands of forest and fruit trees in the next six months deserves full support. It is important not to falter on this target, so that it can be confidently repeated and expanded.

Just think if the army, along with HEART, were to mobilise unattached youth to establish and maintain agroforestry along the ravaged spine of the western parishes. Thoughtfully organised and sustained, long-term environmental, economic, national security, academic and vocational productivity dividends are bound to accrue.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.