Invest in our schools – JTA boss

Winston Smith, president of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA), has appealed to corporate Jamaica, the Ministry of Education and other members of high society to invest in the pressing need for the structural improvements of schools across the island.

Smith, who shared remarks at the Lions Club of Kingston’s final speaking meeting of the calendar year, called for a serious revisiting of how educational institutions are treated, which he said leads to a demoralised group of teachers who are doing everything they can to produce quality students in the twenty-first century.

POOR WORKING CONDITIONS

Among the several difficulties confronting the Jamaican educational system, Smith suggested that schools across the country have been subjected to poor working conditions for far too long. He said he has seen schools with no staff room, principals’ offices next to bathroom facilities that were used by all members of staff, including security, limited desks and chairs for teachers, no Internet connectivity within schools, limited to no running water, no area for children’s recreation, and the long-standing issue of classroom overcrowding with up to 30 to 40 students.

“I think we have narrowed the conversation of education too much, we have contracted it in a manner that it does not allow for a full ventilation of the myriad of challenges that we face in education and it [is] negatively impacting the delivery of education and the results we seek to derive from the whole educational process,” he said.

“If we are going to build a nation, we must recognise that education has to be the foundation, the walls and the decking for the building, if we are going to build a nation of prosperity, of progress, of good moral, ethical behaviour and of productivity,” he continued while noting that this could not be accomplished if Jamaicans did not rethink, revisit, reshape and reorganise their plans, outlook and investment in education.

“We have our schools, we have abundant schools, yet we expect schools that have been built from 1964 or earlier, operated like 1960 and 70 to produce 21st century students and quality,” he added, further asserting that dilapidated schools could only produce students of mediocrity.

He compared the education system to a three-legged stool and explained that “if a leg is broken off, the good or skilful children can sit on that stool and operate as though nothing has gone wrong,” but added that the majority of students who used the same stool would end up “falling off and hurting themselves” as the majority are currently struggling to function in the classroom.

Smith added that Jamaica could not expect its teachers and children to be ‘top class’ if a massive spend on infrastructural development did not occur.

Though he acknowledged that such redevelopment would be costly and preclude an immediate, islandwide transformation, he implored the nation to have a desire to begin some place.

“Let us not seek to do the entire nation at once, because if we try to fix every single school in Jamaica at the same rate, at the same time, at the same level, we will never attain or achieve that goal,” he said.

Instead, he proposed that at least two schools in each of the six regions, or the quality education circle, where institutions are grouped into early childhood, primary, secondary, and tertiary levels within a geographical area, be developed into model schools by providing resources and adequate facilities for improved teaching and learning outcomes.

“Make education the number one priority and when I say make it priority, I am calling on all the well-thinking businessmen and women of Jamaica to come on board in a fulsome way,” he said, and resist the urge to make the experience be about publication.

“Stop use education as a marketing tool to promote your business, but see it as a way of helping the school to grow,” he said.

He also encouraged businesses to sponsor or adopt schools and established well-needed science labs and other needed resources.