Mr Michael Stewart, the new president of the Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA), has to make up his mind about which side of history he wants to stand and, therefore, how and where he leads the organisation.

He can either take the JTA deeper into its encrusted mediocrity, or he can wrest it from its intellectual sloth and drag it into a new paradigm - active in support of education reform and insistent on the accountability of teachers.

Such shifts, of course, are never easy and is likely to be particularly difficult for the teachers' union, whose long drift from big and substantive ideas has been accelerated under the unremarkable presidency of Mr Stewart's predecessor, Mr Doran Dixon. In other words, the job for Mr Stewart, should he choose to accept the assignment, is the remaking of the JTA into an organisation worthy of the times.

Should Mr Stewart doubt what is at stake, he need only remind himself of some of the data relating to the state of education in Jamaica, including whether taxpayers receive an adequate return on their investment.

Current fiscal year

In the current fiscal year, for instance, the government's budget for education is close to $72 billion, or nearly 30 per cent of the overall allocation, when debt payments are excluded.

Yet, as Education Minister Andrew Holness recently pointed out, it is estimated that perhaps a quarter of the students at grade six were at a literacy level two grades below what is required for them to adequately access secondary education. And perhaps a third of the cohort is barely ready for secondary schooling.

Moreover, school administrators annually exclude around half the grade-11 cohort from writing the Caribbean Examinations Council's secondary-school examinations. Only a little more than half of those who sit the examinations pass English, while around 43 per cent pass math. Under a fifth gain as many as five subjects in a single sitting.

It has become reflex for the JTA to seek to extricate itself and teachers from this sorry state of education. But worse, the organisation has failed to engage in any deeply serious public discourse on the matter or display leadership on efforts to fashion a fix.

Skewed feeder system

Its response, particularly during Mr Dixon's unremarkable tenure, was to merely blame a skewed feeder system that channelled 'bright' students to the top high schools. Nothing could be done, they implied, unless there was parity across the entire education system.

And the JTA demanded more pay for teachers, but rejected any attempt to link reward to performance. The JTA revelled in a psychosis of failure, as though underperformance is a given. The then leadership ignored schools like Mr Stewart's Porus High which, though not among the elite institutions with the 'best' students, continuously lifted its outcomes.

What the old JTA failed to appreciate, or deliberately ignored, was that leadership matters - whether in schools or enterprise. Head teachers, like other CEOs, in that context, ought to be held accountable for the performance of their schools.

It is nonsense, we have insisted, to argue that it is almost impossible to design a workable performance measure for Jamaican schools, which is why we support Mr Holness' plan for principals to be employed on contracts, with annual performance targets to be fulfilled.

Mr Stewart must haul the JTA, even if it's kicking and screaming, on-board.

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