Give all students equal opportunity for education, says clergyman

WESTERN BUREAU:

Ahead of Monday’s staging of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association’s (JTA) 59th annual conference, Suffragan Bishop of Montego Bay Leon Golding is reminding educators that all children must be given an equal opportunity for quality education. This opportunity must be provided regardless of their backgrounds or whether they attend traditional or non-traditional schools.

Golding gave the admonition on Sunday during his keynote sermon at the JTA’s annual pre-conference church service, held at the Holy Trinity Church in Montego Bay, St James. The service was held under this year’s JTA conference theme, ‘Advancing the vision – reigniting the passion through equitable and inclusive educational opportunities’.

“There is still what I call a prejudice among all of us, seeing how we relate to children depending on the school they attend or the area they are from. In some cases, take the same teacher who serves downtown and bring them uptown, or from a traditional high school to a non-traditional high school, and you have a different person. Our attitudes change depending on how we perceive those with which we are dealing,” said Golding.

“Some of us think that non-traditional schools are not worthy of the brighter students, but the education of every child is important no matter their family background or their family’s finances. Every child can learn and every child must learn, and we ourselves have to look at the prejudices in the system if we are to enable every child in the educational system to learn,” Golding added. “Our educational system must be, as your theme suggests, equitable and inclusive, without partiality, and this must be our aim as indicated by your theme.”

His advice follows a similar recommendation in 2018 from former chief executive officer of the National Parenting Support Commission Dr Patrece Charles, who suggested that the best teachers should be sent to non-traditional high schools in order to improve high schools’ all-round quality and allow students going to the non-traditional schools to feel more comfortable.

Perceptions of superiority

Last April, evaluation specialist Professor Neville Ying recommended that the classification of Jamaica’s schools as traditional or non-traditional should be done away with as such labelling would result in perceptions of superiority or inferiority.

In June this year, the Ministry of Education and Youth reported that 85.8 per cent of students who sat the Primary Exit Profile (PEP) exam were placed in schools of their choice. It was also reported that 4,134 students or 11.5 per cent of the cohort were placed at a secondary school within a 10-mile radius of their primary schools, while 566 or 1.57 per cent were manually placed at a school in the proximity of their home addresses.

Golding also urged the teachers at Sunday’s church service to ensure that they give their students as much support as possible to help them achieve their full potential.

“With all the problems in the education system, many of us have succeeded because of that someone who had faith in us that we could make it and who spoke on our behalf even when we could not see beyond the immediate and lacked faith. We in our time must stand in the gap with faith on behalf of all our children,” said Golding.

“If there is ever a time in Jamaica when we need to come together to protect our children, it is now, especially when we hear the kind of things that are happening to our children throughout our land. We need to stand on their behalf to protect them, believing that they can achieve their God-given potential,” Golding added.

christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com