Martin Henry

The vast majority of Jamaicans are now able at least to recognise their name on a bulla. Some of them barely. Unfortunately, many cannot read the newspapers with any real comprehension.

This failure of reading comprehension continues all the way into tertiary education where I have extensive first-hand experience with it. It is called functional illiteracy, in contrast to absolute illiteracy, where basic word recognition does not take place. Functional illiteracy is one of the main failure factors in examinations and a huge cost in the education system.

Years ago, I wrote a column, "First teach them to read", which advocated making literacy education the centrepiece of the reform of primary education instead of packing all kinds of fancy stuff into the curriculum which children who don't learn to read can't benefit from very much. Children who learn to read well early can very quickly learn everything else thereafter.

Secondary-level illiteracy

Billions of dollars, much of it borrowed, has been pumped into various education-reform projects since then. When I worked with the Reform of Secondary Education (ROSE) curriculum development process so many years ago, it was alarming and a point of criticism to see the curriculum pandering to 'the fact' of illiteracy at the secondary level.

One of the truly significant developments in the stream of educational-reform projects, among them a Literacy Improvement Project, has been the creation of the National Assessment Programme (NAP). The NAP provides a learning-readiness test at grade one, a literacy test at grade four, and a primary-level achievement test at grade six - the GSAT. This programme of assessment provides for the first time hard data on educational outcomes at the primary level.

After six years of primary education, performance on the terminal achievement test at grade six has been hovering at around 50 per cent for English and math - the basic tools for further learning. At the start of NAP testing, only 43 per cent of grade four students were achieving the mastery level on the literacy test. That figure has progressively risen to 75 per cent for the 2006 test. So, change is possible.

Minister of Education, Andrew Holness has announced the improvement of literacy as a main focus of the ministry. The fact of the matter is that raising literacy levels, functional literacy levels, is the cheapest and most reliable way to raise the performance level of the entire education system - and the performance of the economy for that matter.

Remediation

The higher up remediation has to be done, the more costly it is and the less effective. And there is a huge remediation cost in the education system. The minister has even made a 'direct link' between illiteracy and violence in schools as many students are frustrated at the fact that they are unable to understand and access what is being taught.

I am nervous, though, about the approach the Ministry of Education is taking to tackle illiteracy. There first thing is the creation of a 'management structure.' There is a national literacy coordinator, eight regional coordinators, 50 literacy specialists and school-based literacy coordinators. I sincerely hope the programme is planning to make every primary-school teacher naturally a literacy 'specialist', particularly at grades one, two and three. Pardon me. Isn't that what their job is, or ought to be anyway?

With due respect to the heavily degreed people making a living as literacy specialists and scholars of literacy, learning to read and write early in life is a pretty natural process when learning readiness is in place and a reading-friendly environment is created.

I read Andrew Holness to be a practical, down-to-earth man who wants to get things done. JAMAL, years ago, made serious in-roads into reducing adult illiteracy using simple methods and non-regular teachers, some of whom were only a couple of reading steps ahead of their students. Unfortunately, the school system kept pumping out illiteracy. But, if anything, literacy is much easier to acquire in childhood.

Make literacy the focus of every school; not the focus of Ministry of Education bureaucracy. Make every teacher a literacy teacher in the normal course of her professional work; not hire a handful of 'scarce commodity' literacy 'specialists'. Provide stimulating reading material. Perhaps newspapers could be induced to run a regular page of literacy support material to make it really cheap and available. Cut class sizes to levels where teacher attention will encourage literacy acquisition. Establish supportive learning space in which children can explore text. Provide some nutritional support. Make reading and writing fun and a desired skill.

Reading Week

This week is 'Reading Week'. Children who learn how to read early in life and acquire a taste for reading can't be stopped and will surge ahead in education. The primary school has no more important function than to teach the foundational skills for life success. But while we move to cut illiteracy coming out of the primary school, we must also arrest illiteracy at the start of the secondary level, at grade seven.

Backing his minister of education while proposing a study of methods at four high-performance upgraded high schools, Prime Minister Bruce Golding recently rolled out some dismal stats on secondary-level performance. This level, unfortunately, does not yet have the precise standardised performance measures which the NAP provides for the primary level. But as Golding tells us, of 53,000 students who graduate from high school each year, only 15,000 go on to tertiary education; 13,000 have passed only two or one CXC subjects; and nearly a half of those graduates, 25,000, have passed nothing at all except time and are not basically functionally literate. It all began in lower primary school where they either learned or did not learn to read and write well. And that is where the fix must take place, through decisive action.

Martin Henry is a communications consultant.