MANAGEMENT EXPERTS are advising educators to stop regarding student achievement in external examinations as the only means of measuring teacher performance.

According to international management consultant, Dr Trevor Hamilton, the Ministry of Education has been measuring the wrong output, and he has suggested that the level of knowledge students acquire over time should, instead, be taken into account, among other things.

Hamilton was addressing a group of educators and journalists during a Gleaner Editors' Forum held at the company's North Street head office in central Kingston yesterday.

Inadequately defined

He argued that performance in examinations is not the single most important outcome from education. Hamilton said that terminal tests, such as the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) exami-nations, only allow for a 30 per cent success rate.

"The value and outcome in education is inadequately defined. We are simply measuring the wrong outputs in schools," Hamilton said.

He noted that mandatory perfor-mance assessment of teachers in the present school environment and its existing performance measurement culture could fail about 70 per cent of teachers.

The international consul-tant said the objectives of performance assessment are to realise improvements or transformation of the students and where to allocate resources and value for money or rate of return on investment.

Behaviour indicator

To this end, Hamilton suggested some indicators to measure the performance of schools.

He underscored behavioural outcome, which he considered as the most critical success factor in life - and which accounts for more than 60 per cent of employability and job retention - as an important indicator.

"Behaviour is the most important success factor. I can come out of school with one CXC and can becomevery successful if I have the right behaviour," Hamilton told the forum.

He added: "I believe incremental knowledge is a success factor. If I come into the school and I am dumb and I leave and can read, that's a major success factor. Don't tell me that I pass or didn't pass. I come in dumb and I can now read. To me, that's the incremental knowledge," he said.

Management consultant, Robert Wynter, noted in his contribution that only students are held accountable for their performance. He said this accountability is based on their examinations, such as CSEC and end-of-term examinations.

"It is a travesty of justice not to hold the minister of education, permanent secretary, chief education officer, board members and principals to the same level of scrutiny and accountability as for students," he said.

Against setting standards

Wynter also suggested that each school should have its own standards and develop its own targets.

But Doran Dixon, president of the Jamaica Teachers' Association, is against setting standards for individual schools. According to him, a traditional school, such as Campion College, will have more resources available to it than an upgraded high school.

"If we go that route, we are going to perpetuate a bad system," said Dixon.

In her remarks, Nadine Molloy, president of the Jamaica Association of Principals and Vice-Principals of Secondary Schools, said the playing field was not level, and that should be taken into consideration.

She said schools needed minimum standards. "If there is no minimum standards in schools, how do you expect us to perform?" she asked.

petrina.francis@gleanerjm.com