THE $5 BILLION Education Transformation Project announced by the Prime Minister in his Budget speech raises many fundamental issues. We will not hear him speak to the vexed question of the proposed method of finance although that is a matter of the gravest public concern.
There is an equally important matter which needs to be urgently addressed. This vital subject of educational reform has apparently been given over to the management of a mysterious 'transformation team' operating in the background without public scrutiny and accountability. No one wants to rush to judgement but the Prime Minister's announcement suggests that this mystery team is operating on the same flawed assumption that bedevilled the Task Force Report which it claims to be implementing.
This is the view that the failure of the Jamaican educational system is primarily a failure of access, management and poor physical plant. Therefore, if one fixes the physical plant, decentralises educational management and improves access, students' performance in English, math and science (the bottom line) will significantly improve. Apart from the remedial summer literacy camp (what can that achieve?)
and the formation of a national parent-teachers' association, this is essentially what has been announced so far.
But is such an assumption warranted? We strongly doubt it. Mismanagement, poor organisation and a dilapidated school plant are important issues which need addressing, but they do not go to the heart of the matter. The fundamental failure is a failure of quality. Whichever level of the educational system we choose to focus on whether early childhood, primary, secondary or tertiary we are confronted by
failures of quality.
The Task Force Report avoided concluding on the question of quality and the 'transformation team' seems bent on evading it, hiding behind arguments about the need for 'holism'. Some argue that the problem is primarily due to poor quality teaching. Others attribute it to the weak early childhood system. Yet others blame the effects of a crass public culture and a negative home environment. Whatever the causes, the consensus of both local and international research seems to be that good plant, access and decentralised management will not, by themselves, good schools make.
It is the challenge of improving the quality of the human element which is the crux of the matter and which has to be confronted. If this analysis is correct then, on the course proposed, we will be spending the $5 billion of citizens' hard-earned housing trust deductions on a multiplicity of school construction contracts without any hope of seeing the quality improvements we so urgently need.
An essential part of achieving this focus on quality is to open up the process of implementation to more public scrutiny, discussion,
participation and accountability. As those who have worked on quality
issues in the private and public sectors know from experience, making sustainable improvements in quality is one of the most difficult things to achieve.
A crucial part of achieving improvements is the nature of the
implementation process itself. As the Prime Minister himself pointed out, education reform is a critical public interest which requires
constant public input. The Government, through the Minister of Education, therefore has a duty to ensure that these concerns will be seriously addressed.
