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Schools of the future?

SOME 30 per cent of 12 to 15-year-old students are held in the post-primary grades 7 - 9 of the country's All-Age schools. Under the theme 'Schools of the Future', the Government has launched the Jamaica All-Age Schools Project (JAASP). The JAASP was launched to correct serious deficiencies which have been identified particularly in rural All-Age schools. These deficiencies include the lowest pupil achievement in the country, a 50 per cent rate of functional illiteracy, and the highest rate of absenteeism. These schools have the highest proportion of untrained teachers and the lowest financial support for learning resources.

All-Age schools are ugly contradictions to the Government's quest for access, quality, and equity in the education system. Their best students are creamed off at grade six for secondary education. The others plod on for three more years with no improvement in literacy, no skills training, and nowhere to go afterwards except for the fortunate few who get a late secondary place through the Grade Nine Achievement Test. These schools are dead-ends for the losers.

The Government has pulled off Grades 7 - 9 of some All-Age schools to become Junior High Schools. These new additions to the system face the problem of weak articulation with the rest of the secondary level. Graduates have no guarantee of a grade 10 place in a secondary school. The Junior High appear to be dead-ends too.

The lofty objective of the JAASP is the elimination of poverty through improvements in the quality of education for students in the poorest communities in Jamaica. This objective would be better served by the phased abolition of this category of schools altogether.

All-Age schools, with all their intractable limitations and deficiencies from well-known causes, are certainly not the schools of the future. They are very much the schools of the past - anachronisms in any modern education system which is serious about access, quality and equity. They are not worth preserving, especially with aid money granted for development.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner.

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