If it can count Roderick Rainford among its alumni, the former Gordon Town All-Age School can lay claim to pedigree. Mr Rainford is a highly respected former secretary general of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), who also had a stint as governor of the Bank of Jamaica, before going on to work at the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

But Mr Rainford, we are sure, subscribes fully to the position that while past performances of institutions demand respect, reverence even, enduring greatness can't be defined solely by what has gone. Institutional excellence is not an event, but a continuum. So, present and future achievements are critical equations in the assessment.

It is in this context, therefore, that we note last Thursday's formal renaming of the Gordon Town All-Age School in honour of the great Jamaican folklorist and poet, Louise Bennett-Coverley. Mr Rainford was guest speaker at the function and made an important observation about 'Miss Lou'.

"She was," he said, "a person who believed and personified hard work, excellence, persistence and patriotism." We agree! Which is why we celebrate when Jamaican institutions are named for people like Louise Bennett-Coverley and others who contributed to Jamaica's development and the country's rich heritage.

Too often, though, attaching the names of famous Jamaicans to schools or other institutions appears to be an end in itself, without responsibility on the part of the institution to perform in a manner befitting the name it carries.

secondary-school performances

We have in recent times, for example, in reviews of the performances of Jamaican secondary schools, drawn attention to several named after famous Jamaicans. In terms of the fields in which they gained national and global attention as writers and poets, Claude McKay, that important figure of the Harlem Renaissance, is perhaps closest to Miss Lou as a personality for whom a school was named.

In last year's Caribbean Examination Council school-leaving exams, only 48 per cent of the students passed English. But even that masks a deep problem, for that 48 per cent represents 11 students. In other words, from an eligible cohort of 190 students, only 34, or 18 per cent, were considered by the school's administration worthy enough of taking the exam. Based on the weighted-average performance of the school in English over a three-year period, this newspaper accorded Claude McKay High a quality-of-performance score of 2.7 out a possible 100.

Claude McKay High, to be fair, was not the only school with either dismal exam results of quality, or performance score. Nor was it the only school that carried the name of a famous Jamaican. Such results, and the crisis in Jamaica's education system, which they represent, were all too common.

So, our concern here is two-fold. The first is to draw attention to the board and staff of the Louise Bennett-Coverley All-Age School that it is not enough to be named for a famous Jamaican. Performance is important to honour Miss Lou. Second, that performance must be measurable, and people held accountable.

In that respect, we insist on the importance of school principals being employed on fixed-term contracts, with specific performance criteria. This must be a precursor to a broader implementation of performance-based remuneration.

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