BROWNNodley Wright, Staff Reporter
A PLAN BY the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) to remove players in the country's Under-17 squad from the formal school system for a period of six weeks while they fine-tune preparation for the final stage of the CONCACAF phase of the World Youth Cup competition is not sitting well with a number of principals.
Jamaica are drawn in Group A with host country Guatemala, the United States and El Salvador in one of two groups in CONCACAF. The winner of each group will qualify for the Youth World Cup set for Finland in August.
A third team will also advance when the second place team in each group meet to finalise a place.
Competition in Group A takes place from March 3-9 and in order to get the players ready for the play-offs, the JFF sees it necessary to remove the players from school for the six-week period. This, however, comes at a time when a number of students in this age group are close to sitting examinations.
Technical director of Jamaica's football programme, Carl Brown, said the plan is nothing new.
"It is not a new policy," said Brown who officially claimed the post of technical director on January 1.
"It is something that we have done on previous occasions where we have invited the players and from time to time it means that they have to be out of school for a period of time. In the past if you look at when Rene Simoes was here they would be in camp for up to four weeks," continued Brown on the camp which is to be held at the G.C. Foster College of Physical Education.
One principal of a Kingston school which will be affected by this policy is far from satisfied with the plan presented to his school by technical director Brown.
"Satisfied is a word that is hard to apply in this situation," he told The Sunday Gleaner.
"I believe the problem is that with boys who are on a CXC programme and are in the last term of it where they have school-based assessment programmes to complete. If they participate in the football programme it will prevent them from finishing that work to be done in school," the principal, who did not wish to be named, said.
Such school-based assessments, he said, were particularly critical in science subjects such as chemistry, biology and physics. In these subjects there are components which have to be done in a short time frame, must be supervised, have to be done under lab conditions and cannot be done off-base. A similar situation arises with a subject such as information technology.
At a second school in Kingston, the vice-principal was similarly not pleased with the position.
"I am certain you must know that schools would be disturbed if students are going to be out of school for six weeks in the first place," the vice-principal said.
"Our problem is that our children are technical students so in their area of speciality it is unlikey that a one tutor (the name of one tutor was presented to them) would help," he continued.
Another difficulty seen by the vice-principal is the number of students to be worked with who would not be all at the same academic level.
"Obviously it would be difficult to work with so many students at this time and the students would be at different levels. We may have students from third to sixth form in this group. Such a disparate group would be difficult for one person and there were concerns with regards to that."
Principal Clement Radcliffe of Glenmuir High in Clarendon, who is also the president of the Inter-Secondary School Sports Association (ISSA), is also not sold on the plan presented to him. Like the other two principals, he had a meeting with Brown last week. He views the proposal as unfortunate and is not only concerned about students preparing for CXC exams but lower school students as well who are not on par with their schoolmates.
"Not all of them would be weak but no matter how academically strong they are, to be out of a regular school schedule for that long - especially the upper forms who would be preparing for exams - would have some effect," Radcliffe said.
According to Radcliffe, the proposal presented seems to be the best the JFF could do under the circumstances but it is still not adequate and he pointed out that he only heard the name of two tutors mentioned.
For his part, Brown said he understands the concerns of the principals and parents.
"That is why we have gone to them personally to talk to them on the situation and they have expressed their concerns. We have spoken to them about our concerns also and the things that we are putting in place if it is possible and they do release the youngsters from school.
"We spoke with them about the effort that we will put in place to ensure that their education continues," said Brown.
In the meantime, a squad of 27 was named to camp tomorrow.
Squad: Duwayne Kerr (Mannings), Richard Kentish, Andrew Fraser (Wolmer's), Marlon Benbow (Dunoon), Anthony Christie, Ricardo Ximinies (Excelsior), Christopher Williams (St George's), Keneil Moodie (Rusea's), Marvin Mundy, Daveion Woodhouse (STATHS), Kevon Elliott (JC), Nicholas Lynch, Leroux Lothian (KC), Tedro Watson (Cornwall), Steven Morrissey (Jonathan Grant), Kemar Munroe, Fidel Anderson, Horace Sharp (St Jago), Ricardo Cousins, Erron Brown (Glenmuir), Seon Giveans (Garvey Maceo), Donovan Miller, Cabreeni Lee (Marcus Garvey), Marvin Fagan (Titchfield), Bryan Bayliss (Norman Manley), Phillip Hall (Florida, US), Tristan Cunningham (Frome Tech).
