Challenges in the education system

The education system faces many challenges. However, there are, in my opinion, three pressing ones which must be addressed in order to restore some balance in the system.

The first challenge which the system, as a whole, must take steps to begin to address is the poor performance of the just over fifty percent of students who are floundering in the education system. It is no secret that the education system has produced much talent, talent which can rival any found regionally or internationally. One expert on the education system believes that the country produces more talent than it can absorb. As a result, there is the constant stream of skilled labour from Jamaica to other countries where these skilled workers perceive work opportunities exist.

However, the importance of education to development has been touted by multilateral agencies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB). They cite developed countries as examples of the "truth" of the education/development link. Jamaica may, therefore, want to develop this link. And the first step in doing this is for the caretakers of the education system to put measures in place to address and correct the challenges to learning with which half of the students in the education system seem to be grappling.

The second challenge that the education system needs to tackle is that of releasing itself from the “deadening hand of bureaucracy”. In spite of some improvement in making the Ministry and some schools responsive to the needs of clients, there is more effort on the part of these institutions to strengthen the bureaucratic principles which ground them. In order to get audience with an administrator, one has to navigate a number of channels which do not provide smooth sailing. After weeks or months, in many cases of waiting, you may be given audience. However, follow-up, on their part, more often than not, never happens.

Frustrating clients seems to be a strategy on the part of these administrators/managers/leaders to get clients "off their backs" so they can continue to attempt to wade through the depths of the bureaucracy with which they have buried themselves, a bureaucracy which instead of being in place to allow for order and some measure of control, is there to insulate them from annoyances which clients seem to represent.

Administrators/managers/leaders of schools as well as workers in the Ministry of Education (MOE) must begin a process of re-visioning their purpose in the education system. Probably, they may want to begin this process by attempting to absorb some of the rhetoric for change which agents of change in the system are spouting.

The third challenge that the education system faces is the need to improve the relationship between the MOE, the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) and teachers. Last year was a rocky one in terms of MOE/JTA/Teachers’ relationship. And this situation has been ongoing. The MOE, at the top of the system, needs to take the first step in an attempt to improve this relationship. The first step has to be improving the flow of communication in both directions among the MOE, JTA and the teachers. However, the flow of communication must also be improved within the departments of the MOE, between the JTA and the teachers they represent as well as between the administration/management/leadership and staff of schools.

A major issue of contention for teachers has to do with the roll-out of policies by the MOEwhich impact them. In attempting to improve the relationship, policies which will impact teachers should be arrived at through very wide consultations. Ideally, those individuals who are involved in the creation of these policies should be practitioners in the education system. The aims of the policies arrived at must be spelled out to teachers and sufficient warning should be given in terms of the intended date of implementation of these policies.

In making an effort to address these issues of concern, those who are caretakers of the education system will begin to right the system and put it on a course of continued development. At the moment, if these issues are ignored many teachers will continue to go through the motions of teaching and the system will continue to fail half of its students.