Editorial | Sensible choices

Having decided not to go outside Parliament for a replacement, and given the depth of the government’s benches, Prime Minister Andrew Holness couldn’t have made a better choice than Fayval Williams as Nigel Clarke’s successor as finance minister.

Indeed, Ms Williams, by training, temperament and experience, is probably a better fit for the job at the northern end of National Heroes Circle, than she was at the education ministry at the southern side.

At the same time, Dana Morris Dixon, given the requirement of the times, is, this newspaper believes, better suited than her predecessor for the job as education minister, even if, some might claim, she now has a bit too much on a plate, given that she also holds the portfolios for information and digital transformation.

There is also the argument to be made, with credibility, that there is a logical intersection between Dr Morris Dixon’s previous assignments and the one that she is now assuming, especially when education is considered in its wider frame.

But there are main reasons why this newspaper believes it fortuitous that, at this time, Dr Morris Dixon is the better fit for the education portfolio. One of these is her energy and animation, which dovetails nicely with the second, which is the experiences she brings from current roles and previously in the private sector in the management of change. Which the education needs plenty of.

In this regard, although there is less than a year to go before a general election, Dr Morris Dixon has an opportunity, which she should to grasp the education sector by the scruff of the neck, and begin to drag to the real road of transformation.

AVOID BEING CO-OPTED BY THEM

But she must do three things. First, while she must listen respectfully and discerningly to the bureaucrats at the education ministry, she must avoid being co-opted by them. It is a strategy and skill that education bureaucrats have mastered to a fine art.

Second, she should relaunch the Patterson Commission report on education transformation and embark on a massive campaign to bring Jamaicans, including education professionals, up to speed on its content and to get stakeholder consensus and buy-in on what must be implemented and the priority/urgency given to each undertaking. For while the committee that was established to monitor the implementation of report’s findings will insist that things are being accomplished and prate about the programme hewing close to timelines, there is little public engagement on the matter.

Put another way, Dr Morris Dixon must have a transformation reset.

But most important of all, she must insist on a reset of the mission of the island’s primary schools. Their primary objective, at whatever cost, must be that no child must leave primary school, at the end of grade six, unable to read or do sums, at his or her age or grade level. She must immediately end the system of the annual, automatic promotion of children from grade to grade regardless of their reading proficiency.

Indeed, each year approximately a third of Jamaican students end their primary education without meeting the proficiency requirements in literacy. It is over 50 per cent in mathematics. In a 2019 review noted by the Patterson Commission (which was chaired by the famed sociologist and Harvard professor, Orlando Patterson) 56 per cent of grade six students couldn’t extract information from a simple English sentence.

PROBLEM PERSISTS

The problem persists in high schools (disproportionately so in those in poor urban and rural communities, which get the bulk of the ill-prepared children) where a fifth of the students who sit the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) exams fail at English. Six in 10 fail maths.

Further, in 2024, of the students who did the CSEC exams, only 14 per cent passed five subjects, which included maths and English.

The system faces a crisis, the curing of which demands more than purposely measured interventions, as important as these are. It insists, too, on an aggressiveness that we believe is better suited to Dr Morris Dixon’s personality than it was to Ms Williams’.

Yet, Ms Williams’ phlegmatic disposition is likely to be a valuable asset at the finance ministry even in the normal course of events, but especially so if the economy were to face unexpected headwinds.

Further, Ms Williams is returning to a milieu where she is not only likely to be more comfortable, but also better prepared given her working experience and education at elite institutions. She holds a first degree in economics from Harvard University and an MBA in finance from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School. She is a Chartered Financial Analyst who worked in the financial sector before entering politics.

It is also a second stint at the finance ministry where she was sent as a deputy to ring fence Audley Shaw against interference with the island’s economic reform agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), after the Jamaica Labour Party’s return to office in 2016.

It is perhaps significant that Dr Clarke, the former finance minister, worked up to the last minute before heading to his new job at the IMF. So, the budget for the coming financial year is largely crafted.

So, barring a major crisis that untethers the fiscal arrangements, Ms Williams greatest short-term challenge will probably be to resist pressures to release the financial spigots ahead of the general election.