Region facing learning crisis, says World Bank rep

WHILE COMMENDING Jamaica for its effort in collecting data on education performance, Dr Jaime Saavedra, World Bank human development regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean believes a more effective use of this data is needed to craft solutions for learning loss and to improve the pedagogy of teachers.

“Jamaica is now in that process of producing a lot of data. What is pending is a better use of the data that is being produced in order to act at the individual level and provide the child the support they need,” he told The Gleaner.

Saavedra, who is a former education minister of Peru, declared that “the whole region of Latin America and the Caribbean and many middle-income countries like Jamaica are facing what we call a learning crisis”.

He labelled as a “disaster”, data from the country’s Education Transformation Commission and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Programme (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022 report which ranked as below average, the mathematics and reading competencies of Jamaican students.

The PISA evaluates the knowledge and skills of 15-year-old students in mathematics, reading and science, performance is graded from level one to six. Only 26 per cent of Jamaican students managed to obtain Level 2 in mathematics benchmark or above, and almost none were in the Level 5 and 6 bracket. With respect to reading, half of Jamaican students gained Level 2 or higher, compared to the OECD average of 74 per cent.

Meanwhile, data from the 2021 Patterson Report, which is the impetus for the Education Transformation Commission, revealed that 59 per cent of students who had completed primary school in 2019 were failing mathematics, while 45 per cent were failing language arts.

Saavedra, however, nothing that these numbers are common across middle-income countries, and stressed the need for countries like Jamaica to fully underscore the magnitude of this problem.

PRIORITY

“If we put together these two exams, basically you’re saying half of the kids aren’t in school and they are not reading well, then it’s going to be difficult to attain any other competence that we care about in education,” he said. “And those kids are gonna be in the labour market for the next 60 years, right? So we need to really worry both about what’s the average of the quality that we’re getting in schools in general and we really need to worry about the equitation, that’s something that must be a priority.”

He, however, acknowledged the interest of the government in addressing this issue, lauding in particular Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke who he said have advocated for issues in education and health.

In November last year, Jamaica signed a US$30 million agreement with the World Bank aimed at improving teaching practices, inclusiveness, learning conditions and reaching more vulnerable students, as well as the use of information for decision making within the education system.

It is anticipated that the project will benefit about 150,000 high school students, 6,000 teachers, school principals, Ministry of Education and Youth staff, education policymakers and practitioners. It also aimed to provide about 2,400 students, at least half of which will be girls, with access to a new science, technology, engineering and mathematics secondary school.

While sharing the World Bank’s intention to expand its support to the primary level as well, Saavedra noted the different areas that need to be addressed to improve the country’s education sector, chief among them being teacher training.

“There are many things that you need to do in order to improve the quality of education in our countries; you need to improve the infrastructure, you need to improve the technology, you need to make sure that all kids have reading materials, you need to improve the input, you need to improve the human factor,” he said.

According to Saavedra, a high-quality education system is directly linked to the calibre of teachers, the support they receive and their understanding of the importance of their role in ensuring that everyone learns by formulating an inclusive pedagogy.

He also contended that the education system could see improvement if the support is provided to teachers.

Saavedra, however, was not keen on the long running suggestion that the salary paid to teachers should be tied to the educational outcomes of their students, instead he said focus should be placed on the value the teacher adds.

“You’d want to measure the value added of the teacher and that’s very difficult. And that’s why we don’t see successful pay for performance systems at the teacher level. There are interesting experiences at the school level; so if you give some extra bonus to a school because you have measured improvement of the school, not the level of the school, that’s what you need to measure. Now those systems are complex to design and to implement, but there are some experiences across the world,” he said.