The Editor, Sir:

The publication of the Grade Four Literacy Test has not only highlighted the numerous weaknesses in the education system but it has reinforced the urgent need for changes in the management and supervision of schools, demand for greater accountability on the part of administrators and classroom teachers, and the maximising of scarce resources.

The results indicate that a large percentage of teachers are underperforming, hence students are being condemned to failure. In addition, the system lacks effective managers and quality supervision from the Ministry of Education. This is evident from the results of one school with a population of 36 students and three teachers which achieved only 20 per cent mastery. Who should be held accountable for such shameful results? One has to conclude that those teachers were not being supervised or they lack the competence to teach students how to master a simple test that requires reading and comprehension.

Teaching methodology

Many of the schools whose entire cohort could not fill a minibus are staffed with teachers who hold first degrees. Today's teachers are more qualified than those of 20 years ago but student achievement has not kept pace with teacher qualification. It is obvious then that more attention needs to be paid to methodology and classroom resources.

If full literacy is to be achieved by 2015, significant changes must be made in the way schools are managed, as well as how students are being taught. The transfer and adoption of best practices must not only be encouraged, it must be mandated. If Kensington Primary, whose grade four enrolment is several times larger than the entire population of more than three-quarters of all the schools in the parish of St Mary, can achieve 99 per cent mastery, it means that the skills needed to teach literacy are not hidden.

Scarce resources

How the scarce resources are deployed needs urgent attention. A number of schools whose entire population is less than a single class in others demonstrate the disparity in the system and the ill-use of financial and human resources. Many of these schools have a pupil teacher ratio of less than 1:15 yet their students do not learn as well as schools with classes that are too large. Can we continue to afford these non-performing schools?

It would be less costly to transport those students to schools where they can be better educated and redeploy the teachers to alleviate the large classes. The savings could then be used to equip more schools and fix roads in communities where access to quality schools is hindered by poor road conditions.

The education ministry continues to short-change a vast number of poor rural students. A child is not responsible for the geography of his birth but he has a right to the same educational opportunities as his peers elsewhere. To whose benefit does the ministry maintain a junior high school with a population of 120 students? What aspect of secondary education are these students receiving? What chance are they being given to compete in a global environment where education is the difference between quality life and persistent poverty?

Education transformation needs to be accelerated with attention paid to the deficiencies in the system that the grade-four test has laid bare.

I am, etc.,

EVENLYN GYLES

Kingston 10