In Jamaica, the issue of performance of students across the system up to grade eleven is cause for concern. A number of tests administered at various points at the primary and secondary levels are used as one of the measures of the performance of schools in the education system.
Many students who enter primary school are found to be unprepared for the primary school curriculum as a result of their performance on the Grade One Individual Learning Profile. According to the Jamaica Education Statistics 2012/2013, this assessment tool “is used to measure the level of students' academic progress and their social readiness for primary school”. The students are assessed in reading, number concepts, oral language, writing and drawing. Their social readiness is assessed by observing their interactions in the classroom. However, according to the Minister of Education, The Honourable Reverend Ronald G. Thwaites (2013) in his presentation , A Call to Action, in the Sectoral debate in Parliament “more than thirty percent of those who move from Early Childhood Institutions to Grade one, cannot satisfy the Grade One Individual Learning Profile”.
In 2012, this thirty percent included students from preparatory schools. What is of note, however, is that sixty-five percent of students from preparatory schools were deemed ready for the primary school curriculum according to the Jamaica Education Statistics 2012/13 (p. 139). Therefore, the extent of the poor performance of students outside the preparatory school system, who continue to be in the majority, is quite stark.
In Grade four students sit the Grade Four Literacy Test (GFLT) which was introduced in 1998. Children at risk of being illiterate at grade six are identified and interventions put in place to improve their literacy levels, at least that is the intention. Of the students from government schools who sat the examination in 2012, approximately seventy two percent attained ‘Mastery’, twenty percent, ‘Almost Mastery’ and eight percent ‘Non-Mastery’. Fifty-six percent of those who achieved ‘Mastery’ were females. Compare these figures to those of the preparatory schools where ninety-four percent of students achieved ‘Mastery’ with the performance of boys and girls being similar.
At Grade six, children sit the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT), the exit examination for primary school students, the examination which determines their placement to high schools. Students are assessed in Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, Language Arts and Composition. In 2012, the national average for Mathematics, Science, Social Studies and Language Arts combined was just over sixty-two percent while the average for Composition was nine out of ten for both boys and girls. Girls outperformed boys in the other subjects. Again, the results were unsatisfactory because almost forty percent of those children placed in high school that year were performing below the grade 7 standard.
The Grade Nine Achievement Test (GNAT) is sat by students who were not placed in high schools; instead, they were placed in All-Age and Primary and Junior high schools. If they are successful in the examination, they are placed in high schools. It is interesting to note that boys outnumber girls in these schools almost 2:1. These students are tested in Mathematics and Language Arts. The national average for Mathematics during the review period was forty-five percent and for Language Arts, fifty-one percent.
After five years in high school, students are expected to sit the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations. Only fifty percent of students in grade 11 sit five or more subjects; in 2012, fifty-two percent of students who sat the CSEC examinations passed English and thirty-eight percent passed Mathematics. But not all students eligible to sit the examination were allowed to do so. Thus, if those who were supposed to have sat the examination by virtue of the fact that they were in grade 11 were added to the number of those who actually sat the examination, only thirty-eight percent of the entire cohort passed English while only twenty percent passed Mathematics. And approximately fifty percent of grade 11 students leave school with only a school leaving certificate and no marketable skills. Seventy-five percent of this number cannot be admitted to the government’s training institutes of the national training agency, Human Employment and Resource Trust (HEART) because they are performing below the grade 9 level in literacy and numeracy (Thwaites, 2013)
The statistics have painted quite a dismal picture of the performance of the Jamaica Education system. The Ministry of Education seems to have located what it believes to be the causes of the problem of poor performance in the education system. The Minister in his presentation to the Sectoral debate in Parliament outlined what he believed to be the causes of the problem of low performance in the system: poor parenting, inadequate diagnosis of learning difficulties, the shift system in some schools, poverty/poor nutrition, unemployment and elements from popular culture. Therefore, the Ministry’s solution is to provide schools with “a healthy family life curriculum”, revamping Early Childhood, Primary and Special Education, provision of textbooks to students, putting in place a behavioural management programme, reintroduction of civics education in schools, including a skills component at all levels of the education system and introducing new programmes aimed at those who left the education system with low levels of literacy and numeracy, to prepare them for the world of work and further educational opportunities.
These factors identified to be causes of the poor performance in schools need urgent solution, a fact that the government has recognised by identifying possible solutions. However, I want to posit that there must be other latent factors or even apparent ones that have not yet been discerned that impact performance in schools because many Jamaicans who have done well in the education system have come from environments rife with the identified causal elements, yet they achieved much from the system.
The solutions identified by the MOE are useful initiatives. But, if fundamental change in the performance of the system is to be realised a strategy needs to be devised based on empirical evidence which is gleaned from the Jamaica education system. After we understand our system, our problems, we will be in a much better position than we are now in to borrow ideas on education from other societies to supplement ours, with the aim of improving our education system.
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