Edward SeagaTHIS IS the third in a series of five presentations concerning a constellation of pivotal problems of the country which, if dealt with, would have widespread impact on related problems leading to broad-based solutions.
The first in the series, 'Poverty Equals Agriculture Equals Poverty', dealt with the greatest social and economic blight of any country, poverty, and singled out the need for a dynamic agricultural sector as the only possible way to open a sufficiently broad area with sufficient scope for development to uplift the poor.
The second, 'The Jamaican Economy: Turning Point or Tipping Point', identified a decisive solution-pegging or fixing the exchange rate, to deal with the deep economic freeze of the past 15 years in which economic growth averaged less than one per cent. This proposed solution would dramatically lower interest rates to drive growth and cut interest payments to free up revenues for urgent expenditure. The profile of the economy would immediately change from stagnation to vibrant growth.
This third article shifts to the social sector which is the base on which many other problems are anchored.
EDUCATION, DOMINANT
SOCIAL PROBLEM
The dominant social problem with the widest ramification is the education sector. This should come as no surprise as this point has been belaboured for many years buttressed by statistics on the dysfunctional state of the education system.
Education covers a broad area of human activity and the related problems are numerous. But within the comprehensive range of issues which plague the system, there is one which underlies all others. I refer, as I have so many times before, to early childhood education which is where the process of education begins.
Education builds a system of learning and understanding in steps which use each previous step to build the next. Failure at the first step will impact on the next, weakening the system. So it is with the first step, early childhood education (ECE), and the second step, the primary school level. The weakness at the ECE level becomes a handicap for learning in primary school. The same sequence is repeated between primary and secondary schools, the secondary carrying over the burden of weak results from the primary school system.
The impact of this chain-linked sequence can be seen from the test results at all stages in the system. Students entering the primary school system take a readiness test in grade one. The frightening results show that 70 per cent of those tested fail, that is, they are not able to cope. It is also worth noting that the failures are predominantly from basic schools, attended by children of the poor, while those who succeed, principally, have private school backgrounds.
The primary school system is largely built on this 70 per cent intake of pupils who are not ready to cope. If primary schools could overcome the deficiencies of the students before they enter secondary schools then the problem would be contained. Unfortunately, this is not the case. When primary school students at age 11 years take the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) to enter the secondary system, the results are relatively weak with average grades mostly just above 50 per cent. It is the secondary school system which then has the final responsibility to correct the accumulated deficiencies among students coming from the early childhood and primary schools. But this does not happen. Results of the exams set by the CXC for graduation from secondary schools, show that only 15 per cent of a graduating class pass the exam, while the remaining 85 per cent either fail, or were too academically weak to sit the exam, or dropped out of school. The 85 per cent who are not successful is an even worse position than the 70 per cent failures of the grade one readiness test. It appears that a very large body of students, 70-85 per cent, travel through the education system as failures from beginning to end. What a waste of human resources!
THOUSANDS OF FAILING STUDENTS
These thousands of failures each year go on to join the unemployed ranks, or become teenage mothers, or budding criminals, or if they are lucky enough, somehow catch some low-paying work requiring little skill. The only further opportunity they have for acquiring a skill is if they can fit into the HEART programme.
The point to be emphasised is that the foundation of the problem was laid in the early childhood years. If the result from those early years produced a majority of successful, 'ready', students instead of little ones who were not ready, this success would work its way up through the primary and secondary systems producing a majority of successful students at the CXC prescribed secondary graduation exam.
In such a scenario, the face of Jamaica would change dramatically. There would be more skilled graduates, more students able to go on to tertiary institutions, more able to get decent jobs and more equipped with the fundamentals to understand the issues of their society and able to climb the ladder of social esteem and success.
This ladder of social progress begins with the first step, the early childhood system. If the foundation is not strong at this point, it will weaken the second step, the primary system, which in turn will be too weak to support the third step, the secondary system. The known result is, inevitably, a failing dysfunctional system.
Strengthening the early childhood system of education has begun with the establishment of an Early Childhood Commission enacted recently with wide powers of responsibility for this area of development. It is currently conducting an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses in the early childhood school system, which is an appropriate starting point. I am not sure what the next step will be but I have been advocating for sometime the take over or replacement of basic schools which cannot make it on their own and the development of these schools to the same level as others in the overall programme. Once this is done and teachers trained to appropriate levels, the system is ready to move forward with strength. The end product will be a trained Jamaica.
Education is critical because it sets the stage for employment and for achieving higher social status. It is an escape route from poverty and low social esteem. Consequently, it is a pivotal social force which impacts on two of the fundamental problems of the country at the same time, poverty and social status. It hardly needs any argument to establish that education is the essential pathway to training, employment and social recognition.
UNEMPLOYMENT A SCOURGE
Unemployment, the basis of poverty is a social and economic scourge. While the statistics indicate a gradual reduction of the unemployment rate, this masks large numbers of underemployed persons who are only surviving on meagre incomes. Young men and women move interchangeably in large numbers from one group to the other. The unpredictability of employment creates a pattern of instability.
The economy is basically, in its low growth mode of the past 15 years, creating insufficient new jobs annually: 16,000 or half the number roughly of the last few years of the 1980s. The solution, of course, is more graduates with skills, not failed graduates without a single pass in a failed education system.
Again, beginning at the beginning, the education system needs to be reoriented to train for jobs. In a previous presentation The Missing Link in Education which was published on February 12, I quoted findings by Brian Collins and Sunday Iyare of the UWI, Cave Hill Campus, which concluded that more financing alone will not improve the education system as a driver of economic growth. The curriculum needs to be more relevant to job potentials. A curriculum revision is overdue for this and many other reasons, including the establishment of character education and life skills as curriculum subjects.
Building a stronger link between education and job creation will assuredly enhance self esteem and upward social mobility. Social status must be recognised as a powerful dynamic which is either a positive driving force or a deterrent. Social acceptance or rejection is central to the life of a large and growing number of Jamaicans who have been, gradually over the past few decades, more actively seeking greater social recognition. Those who use the education ladder, succeed in achieving this recognition. Those who do not, have little by way of other options to create more social space for themselves.
Many have been able to achieve vertical social mobility as entertainers, athletes and some even in business. Others choose anti-social short cuts in seeking the respect denied to them by the social order in which they are trapped. They demand respect as a right which they pursue with might, creating their own social order of indiscipline and violence with its own rankings and élites. Only an education system in which success is achieved by the majority, not the minority, can re-route these social ambitions to a more stable social order.
Transformation of the education system has been put on the reform agenda of government but with:
§ a woeful inadequacy of funding falling short of the transformation budget by some $14 billion of the $52 billion required in the current fiscal year;
§ a wrong direction which omits proper emphasis in creating a powerful early childhood segment;
§ a lack of the real reforms of the curriculum necessary to produce graduates who are ready for employment;
§ an elimination of academic frills by substituting meaningful life skills and character education in the curriculum to create citizens able to better cope with their lives and to better understand the issues and moral structure of their society.
The value of an educated mind is the one asset which cannot be stolen. Germany and Japan both knowledge-based countries, quickly rebuilt themselves from the ashes after the war because, though the land and structures were in ruins, the minds of the people were still fertile and strong.
