Editorial | How many more Whitfields are there?

John Mahfood generally strikes you as one of Jamaica's more civic-minded business moguls, and over the past two years or so, he has been particularly intense in his bare-knuckled advocacy on solutions for crime and the uplift of poor, marginalised citizens. So when he speaks, it is often with a candour and genuineness that force people to look up and listen.

Which is what we hope Senator Ruel Reid, and others in the management of the Ministry of Education, which falls within his purview, will do in the wake of Mr Mahfood's guest column published in this newspaper on November 7. Indeed, we would have thought that Senator Reid and his technocrats would have already refuted Mr Mahfood's testimony of the deprivation, ramshackle and rot that have set in at Whitfield All-Age School as a gross misrepresentation of reality.

For the Jamaican Teas chief executive officer painted such a morbid portrait of dysfunction and decrepitude at the school that someone or some group of persons should be indicted for dereliction of duty. Mr Mahfood says he was invited by South West St Andrew Member of Parliament Angela Brown Burke - newly elected after more than 40 years of representation by her predecessor, Portia Simpson Miller, a former prime minister - to chair the Whitfield board of management in a bid to salvage what was left of the wreckage. And wreckage is perhaps an understatement.

For Mr Mahfood details a level of managerial and operational delinquency that wends its way from Whitfield Town to the Heroes Circle headquarters of the Ministry of Education. Enrolment has plunged from 1,000 to around 90. Of the 27 students who sat the Grade Six Achievement Test in 2017, none passed for traditional high schools because of poor marks. Disaggregated data we have obtained show that in 2015, Whitfield's GSAT performance in mathematics and language arts was around 25 per cent worse than the national average. On Mr Mahfood's visit, there was no water, phone or Internet. A malfunctioning pit is at the centre of the playground. Basic equipment and support staff were non-existent. The general school plant was a metaphor of systemic neglect.

Senator Reid might take some solace in arguing that the breakdown did not start with him or the Jamaica Labour Party administration led by Andrew Holness. And he may even score political points by casting a stone in the direction of Mrs Simpson Miller, the one-time leader of the Opposition People's National Party.

But having done so, Senator Reid and his senior officers at the Ministry of Education cannot unburden themselves of complicity in the malignancy that has taken hold at Whitfield All-Age. Indeed, an investigation should be launched into the supervision and management deficit that led to such putrefaction at the school, which has, no doubt, blighted the chances of poor, marginalised children who were never given a fair chance at life. It is likely that many who transitioned dropped out of high school, or passed through the system with little academic fruit.

Transformation begins

Mr Mahfood has marshalled a coalition of benevolent companies and persons who have begun the grinding transformation of Whitfield All-Age by upgrading the school's infrastructure, employing staff, and organising standard but important programmes such as after-school classes. And we applaud them for their magnanimity. But Whitfield aside, we wonder whether there are many more schools (and thus students) that have fallen off the radar and been left to die slowly. Few will be fortunate enough to be rescued by the charitable intervention of the likes of Mr Mahfood and his band of corporate disciples.

Senator Reid, who is now in the hot seat, and his bureaucrats at the education ministry must be held to account. An audit of the schools under its oversight ought to be done to establish how many more institutions are suffering in indignity because of supervisory incompetence or wilful neglect. Do something about it!