Martin HenryTODAY IS GSAT day, and tomorrow. Today is also Budget day. The two, are of course, closely linked. But out of paternal concerns, I have a greater interest in the GSAT, today. Sonny boy is in, and today is also his birthday. Minister of Education Burchell Whiteman has candidly admitted that there are not enough Grades 10 and 11 places in the education system. Students assigned to Grade 7 in a Junior High School or retained in an All-Age School therefore have no guarantees of progressing to a complete secondary education with opportunities for CXC.
While a major upgrading programme is under way, everybody knows that all secondary school places are not equal, not even at the most basic and equitable level of per capita funding. This is nothing new and the Minister assures us that change is under way. What is troubling is the cloudiness and uncertainty about who gets what.
The Common Entrance was a brutally clear meritocratic allocation mechanism in an inequitable system. The child passes her English, her Math and Mental Ability tests and got a Traditional High School place, plain and simple. GSAT allocation, we are told, is on the threefold bases of choice of school, geographical location, and exam performance. How these potentially contradictory factors are weighed and computed remains a closed-door mystery.
In our society, critical assessment is often regarded as a declaration of war rather than as useful feedback for improving things. But having re-raised my GSAT concerns, my subject today is the Education White Paper.
After more than a year of public discussion, the Green Paper on Education has now been tabled in Parliament as a White Paper. For those not onto the parliamentary colour coding, a Green Paper is a proposal from Parliament for public discussions. A White Paper is a document specifically for parliamentary debate towards legislation.
The Paper Education: The Way Upward A Path for Jamaica's Education at the Start of the New Millennium is a revolutionary document which places Burchell Whiteman in the league of Florizel Glasspole and Edwin Allen as a transformative Minister of Education.
Ironically, some of Minister Whiteman's most critical dilemmas are by-products of the most important success of Glasspole and Allen: expanded access to secondary education through the Common Entrance which failed, at best, 75 per cent of its candidates, and the creation of second-class Junior Secondary Schools for CEE failures.
Whiteman's impossible task is to simultaneously improve quality, access and equity, from early childhood to tertiary level, and to do it on a shoe-string budget against powerful vested interests in retaining much of the status quo. As I have told him, nowhere in the world have quality access and equity been raised together and ever equalised across a system. But some utopian tasks are worth pursuing, I suppose.
The Education Paper generally is a pragmatic statement of strategy based on many reform projects already under way. I was therefore more than a little distressed to hear the Prime Minister unrealistically pledging 15 per cent of Budget to Education when he tabled the White Paper on behalf of the Minister in the House of Representatives.
As the White Paper itself notes: Over the past five years (1996 - 2000), the budgetary allocation to education has fluctuated between 10.6 and 14.5 per cent of the Government's budget. Over the same period the allocation to debt servicing increased from 45.3 per cent in 1996 to 58.2 per cent in 2000, severely reducing government's expenditure in the public sector.
I wholeheartedly agree with the conclusion of The Gleaner editorial on the Education White Paper (Tuesday, March 20): The Prime Minister's promise that there will be an expenditure of at least 15 per cent of the annual recurrent budget on education is not likely to be kept.
Unless other needy factors are to be further starved, the education slice of the budget cannot be significantly expanded. The really feasible reforms will be those not requiring significant additional budgetary support. The parliamentary debate should seek to clearly identify these key elements as a demonstration of good sense.
Among the seven strategic objectives of the MOEC are: Literacy for all; access, equity and relevance throughout the education system; accountability and performance management in order to improve performance and win public confidence and trust; effectiveness and efficiency of staff; and greater use of information and communication technology.
Fourteen critical minimum targets have been set. Over and above the usual input targets of enrolment, attendance, teacher/student ratio, and infrastructure, there are some very useful performance output targets: 80 per cent achieving full literacy at Grade 6 by 2003; five per cent annual improvement in CXC passes in English and Mathematics; and each school will have specific targets and will be assessed against these targets annually.
Every grade 7 student will have access to a full five years of secondary education by 2003. Tertiary education is to jump to 15 per cent by 2005. Early childhood education is to receive much stronger support. There will be at least one computer in every primary school by 2005. And, much to my personal satisfaction as an advocate, a High School Equivalency scheme for adults is to be established by 2003.
Another area of personal advocacy reflected in the White Paper is an Education Charter of service. For years I have been a public and private pusher for Citizens Charters in the Public Service. The White Paper says: The MOEC will establish a Charter of service to its several clients. It will scrupulously observe the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act.
It will provide timely information. And the MOEC will, as from the year 2003, publish relevant information about school performance based on the national standards set for each category of schools. An 11-point Charter framework is set out. The explicit inclusion of the moral, spiritual and ethical dimensions and the inculcation of positive values and attitudes, is heartening, although not very concrete.
The way upward for education is appropriately built on the principle of partnership. This Paper represents a commitment of the Government to engage our people in the strongest possible partnership in the development of our human resources. The Paper sets out a partnership agreement with teachers, the state, the parliamentary Opposition, the community, religious groups, alumni, parents, independent schools, the private sector and NGOs, civil society, the media, teachers colleges, students, and PTAs. Has anybody been left out?
It was pathetic to read (Gleaner, March 22) that principals were concerned that they had little input into the former Green Paper on Education. Whose fault is that? The JTA certainly had a big input and the Paper was open to discussion by every citizen and group. Having myself pulled apart the Green Paper on Education in critical analysis, it is my considered judgement that both it and the successor White Paper are substantially sober and reasonable propositions for transforming education in meaningful ways.
Martin Henry is a communications consultant.
