Some 50,000 young Jamaicans have now received their results for this year's Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) and we have been featuring some of their success stories. But what after the GSAT?
The test, which replaces the Common Entrance Examination (CEE), was intended primarily to be an achievement test at the end of the primary level of education. The old CEE, created by Premier Norman Manley in 1958 to expand access to the elitist high schools, had become a straight placement examination for scarce high school places.
Since 1958, the secondary level of education has been greatly expanded - and fiddled with - by successive political administrations. Almost every Jamaican child is now guaranteed some sort of education to grade nine, three years beyond the primary level, and most can go on to grade 11 in a full secondary programme. But all schools are not equal, and some to which GSAT students were initially assigned do not even exist. Hence, the mad scramble to get a 'quality place' in the GSAT placement. The GSAT, for all practical purposes, is a new Common Entrance Examination with much of the drama and trauma to which 11-year-olds have been subjected for nearly 50 years.
The placement criteria of choice, performance and geographical location of the student, are mutually contradictory. Every child and his or her parents will want to choose a top school regardless of proximity to home or performance in the test of faith and endurance which is the GSAT. On the other hand, the Ministry of Education has a vested interest in raising the standards in the newly-upgraded high schools by allocating some GSAT top performers there.
There has been a recent resurrection of an old argument for the placement of students in a school near to their homes. The merits are chiefly in reduced travel time and costs. But there are substantial difficulties with respect to quality and performance issues. In Kingston alone, some of the stronger schools in a generally weak secondary school system, for example, are in what have become depopulated inner-city areas from the vagaries of our political and economic history. In terms of numbers and performance, it is doubtful if these schools could survive under a neighbourhood school policy. And top performers outside their area would be denied access to them.
The grade four literacy test is also delivering worrying concerns about the state of literacy at the primary level. And teachers are reporting that the post-test literacy intervention programme has not been working well in fixing the problem which continues into the secondary school.
The vast majority of students do not exit the secondary level with a sufficient number of external examination passes for entry into tertiary education or the world of work requiring basic knowledge and skills. Our lead story yesterday, backed by poll data, reported what is widely known, that lack of education, skills and appropriate attitude are rendering large numbers of post-secondary young people unemployable. Data from the Planning Institute of Jamaica, 2006, show 40.6 per cent of students passing one to three subjects and another 22 per cent passing none. The minimum entry requirement for college-level post-secondary education is four CXC, or equivalent, passes.
There can be few national matters of any greater importance for the next political administration to tackle after the next general elections, than giving the nation's children better educational opportunities and better work opportunities.
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