Reform Jamaican education system now
Published:Tuesday | June 27, 2023 | 12:17 AM
THE EDITOR, Madam:
I’ve been a teacher for over 15 years, and I have come to the conclusion that there is a great declension in the quality of education in Jamaica. Increasingly, teachers have been treated like second-class citizens. They are underpaid, overworked, undervalued, and overlooked.
In relation to parents, so many of them are decked out in the most fashionable outfits, hairstyles, etc, yet their child/children are underperforming. Parents are a part of the learning ecosystem and greater care should be taken by them. Knowing our colonial past and the ‘backra maasa’ mentality some of us still have, it seems like some parents do not respond to anything outside of a threat. I’m talking from personal experience.
The education system does not aim for us to advance, and wants to trap us in a continuum, so the skills like financial literacy, entrepreneurship, cybersecurity, negotiation, social literacy, etc, need to be taught. We also need to use the flipped classroom method. The minister of education needs to pay keener attention to these areas and actually listen to teachers who have been in the education system for a while.
As a literacy specialist I’ve seen a significant decline, more so since the COVID-19 pandemic as it relates to phonological awareness, phonic and phonetic skills, communication, penmanship, social skills, etc. There are numerous cases of learning disorders and disabilities, and there is a dire need for more special-education units in Jamaica. The early-stimulation programme needs about 12 more sites, as many students cannot benefit due to the magnitude of backlogs and appointments. Some students in the primary and high schools need to be introduced to a skill, as some of them are neither here nor there; they are unable to read, and reason. The students matriculating into college now are grossly underperforming in comparison to their cohorts 10 to 20 years ago. The declension is real.
The Jamaican Education Transformation Commission ( The Reform of Education in Jamaica 2021, or Patterson Committee Report) cited that although the great majority of children have access to primary and secondary schooling, Jamaica still has a severe learning crisis. Many of our primary and secondary students remain illiterate and innumerate. Most of them leave schools with no marketable skills. The report shows that there are major deficiencies in the education sector.
I unequivocally say that September 2023 will not be normal. There will be exodus of teachers in the near future. Since teachers are insignificant and can’t get a liveable wage, then they might as well prepare AI to teach the children.
RENNAY MOORE