We are grateful to Andrew Holness, the education minister, for his publication this week of the performance by government schools in this year's grade-four literacy tests.

Principals, too, should be happy with the minister's action, particularly the head teachers of a school such as Westphalia All-Age in St Andrew, or Springfield All-Age and Infant in St James.

But the story from Springfield, a school with 127 students, points to the relevance of the publication of these results and the opportunity it provides the society to help hold teachers accountable for classroom outcomes as Jamaica seeks to turn around its too-heavy deficit in education.

At Springfield, 23 of the 27 students sat the grade-four tests. Eleven of them, or 48 per cent, were, based on the expectation of competence of a nine-year-old child, illiterate. Only 22 per cent had full mastery of the literacy inventory, although another 22 per cent came close.

It gets worse

The situation was worse at Westphalia where more than half (54 per cent) of the 11 grade-four students who were tested were deemed to be clearly unable to master the required literacy, numeracy and other cognitive skills expected at that age level. Only 15 per cent were thus competent.

While these schools were among the poorest performers in the grade-four exams - run on a nationally standardised basis for the first time - the problem they represent runs deep across the national education spectrum. Indeed, of the nearly 47,000 children who did the test, 70 per cent showed full mastery of the inventory. Of the rest, nine per cent were totally outside the loop. The rest were relatively close. However, in government schools, the ratio of fully literate grade-four students, at 67 per cent, was three percentage points behind the national average. Or, looked at another way, approximately two-thirds of fourth graders have problems of literacy and numeracy, thus are substantially behind where they should be in preparation for secondary education. In other words, the performance of private preparatory schools helps to lift the average.

Severity masked

Even that low two-thirds literacy among grade-four students masks the severity of the problem in government schools when it is viewed against the backdrop of the 18 per cent of government primary schools where 80 per cent or upwards of their students achieved full mastery of the literacy inventory.

The laggards are likely to claim all kinds of reasons for the top performers, including the socio-economic environment in which they operate. But that would hardly explain the performance of, say, Windward Road Primary (80 per cent), Allman Town Primary (89 per cent), Unity Primary in Westmoreland, Esher Primary in Hanover (91 per cent), Half-Way Tree Primary (96 per cent) or Jessie Ripoll Primary, where 98 per cent of its 142 students showed mastery of the inventory.

What tends to be common in these schools are strong leadership and good teachers. Indeed, these schools provide a template for what is to be done if Mr Holness is to realise his target of full grade-four literacy by 2015.

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