Ronald Thwaites | About better teaching

At the Grade 7 Academy we had Easter School for those students whose progress in literacy and numeracy require special attention. The regular teachers understandably pleaded fatigue, so four experienced volunteer instructors gave the children the personal tutoring they need. The results are promising, both in comprehension and personal development. This is what it takes.

Jamaican children are not dunces. Some have untreated emotional and learning challenges. Others are poorly socialised. Many have been given up on by their schools. The deficits experienced by about a half of the schoolers are so deep that small group and even one-on-one teaching is required. Effective and extended teaching and learning time, beyond the prescribed 190 days – not “extra lessons”, regular class for all – is urgently required.

WILLING PARENTS, ENABLED TEACHERS

We find that once parents feel that there is benefit for the extra effort, they offer support. Motivated teachers like our volunteers are essential. It is impossible for this to happen with a class of 40 children where even four are fractious and there is no assistant to help with discipline and compliance.

The two hours per week of reading time in primary school recently announced is scandalously inadequate. Most children, battling with a foreign language called English need at least an hour a day of reading. Do that and watch the other subjects flourish.

These things and many others are what evolving experience tells us will be necessary to overcome illiteracy in schools which is costing us more than a hundred billion dollars a year to underperform. To make the extra effort, teachers cannot be paid but give up on their students. They must be properly remunerated, given the autonomy and facilities to achieve their task and held accountable for the results.

JAMAICA TEACHING COUNCIL

This is why I strongly support the proposed Jamaica Teaching Council legislation. The current bill can no doubt benefit from considered amendment in many of the aspects which the Opposition and some teachers propose. But the principles of regulation and accountability must be fully supported and swiftly effected.

Why is it that the trenchant reform proposals being put forward by Senator Crawford were not accepted at the joint select committee level? Why wasn’t he a part of that exercise? He is likely to be a minister of education. No one side can claim wisdom or can muster the national support essential for thorough educational reform.

ACTION NOW

There needs to be consensus on the basic law and compromise on the details. During the opportunity I had to serve at the Ministry of Education, I was frustrated by every sector’s agreement that something had to be done to professionalise teaching, but the same people had a problem with every measure obviously required. This does not mean that we should rush through a bad law neither should we cavil about every aspect and so cause endless delay. This thing is beyond urgent.

The trouble was, and is, that various interests are putting their own concerns ahead of the paramount objective of the law which is the welfare of every child. The debate on the Teaching Council Bill should start from a definition of what is necessary for schools to stimulate the undoubted god-given genius of Jamaican children.

Work back from that to the policies, legal provisions, human resource and financial arrangements necessary for its achievement. Right now, management of the education system does not properly deploy money, enable flexibility and instil enthusiasm to deliver the required dividends.

GENERATING GENIUS

Lord Tony Sewell, the English-Jamaican educator whose book, Black Success, was launched here last week, tells the story about school principals and teachers in London who were convinced of the low potential of their students, especially Afro-Caribbean and poor-whites.

Not surprisingly, the mood, operation and results at their institutions made that conviction into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Previously low-regarded students could never have reached high levels of STEM excellence through Sewell’s Generating Genius programme without the flexibility to place, remove and reassign teachers according to need and capacity. Jamaica’s education landscape, both in philosophy and operating rules must allow similar latitude.

If teachers feel that their pupils won’t come to much, the students pick up that disrespect immediately and behave accordingly. We keep being told in low-performing places “our students are not like those at Campion, you know”. Of course not. But why not? And what are you going to do about it?

NEW MINDSET

A complete change of mentality towards achievement is required. To quote Sewell again, the pillars of a new school order are accountability by all and the autonomy, the agency to match effort with outcome. The registration and consistent upskilling of teachers are foundational prerequisites for transformation.

To my mind, the bill before Parliament does not go far enough. Can its provisions really be made consistent with the grossly outdated Education Code of 1980? Why on this vital matter have the enabling regulations not been completed during the everlasting run-up ? What is the timetable for completing these or will it be another multi-year elapse like it was with the Road Traffic Act?

As it is, whatever passes in Gordon House is unlikely to take effect for several years. What will be fate of teachers and students in that interim? We are spending billions on remediation rather than fixing the systemic deficits in the schools.

Further, there are many in charge of education who believe that positive reform requires the further control of operations by the State. Savaging the principle of subsidiarity will be a mistake. Boards, principals and administrators, churches and trusts must assert authority over their institutions guided by the first principle of the welfare of each child and the promotion of an ethic of the common good.

SUMMER SCHOOL

At the Grade 7 Academy there are plans now for summer school, funded by the private sector, meals provided and strongly recommended both for continuing and entering cohorts. Parents will be engaged to appreciate the effort and cooperation required for high returns. IQ testing, diagnosis of learning challenges and therapy will be available. Reading and math drills, civics and Christian character mentoring and monitoring will fill out the constructive fun. Costly? Yes.

Effective teaching and learning always is expensive. The lesson we have to learn is that ignorance, low-achievement and their irreversible consequences are costing infinitely more – morally and financially.

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