Ronald Thwaites | My Yute

My Yute, who is entering Grade 8 (second form) at a non-traditional high school, has been told that his class will be doing 17 subjects this academic year. His book and materials list exceed in size, weight and cost the load which university students tote. His father cannot afford the expenditure but has done his best to buy two books on the list, which his son will likely never use.

You see, My Yute can’t really read. The assessment after a year with the literacy coach is that he is reading at the Grade 3 level. He can identify words well enough. Comprehension is the problem. He is not exposed to much spoken or written English, except at school, but he manages superbly on TikTok. Surprisingly, My Yute’s numeracy assessment is also at the Grade3 level. Usually, it lags behind because low levels of literacy don’t help in comprehending a math problem.

PROMOTE TO FAIL

My Yute’s grades don’t place him at the bottom of his class, so repeating Grade 7 was not considered. Instead, he has been earmarked for what is called an “alternative pathway”. Sadly, there is no alternative pathway to literacy, unless there is serious intervention, which his school is unlikely to be able to provide. My Yute is on an escalator to failure.

The high school I visited recently costs the Jamaican taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Is commensurate value being realised for this big investment? It is reasonably well-equipped and the teachers, with the exception of a few jaded time-servers, are no less competent than those whose students get great results at Campion or Glenmuir. I observed more than 100 earnest parents whose tired-but-expectant eyes told me of desperate hope and doubt about their children’s futures.

My Yute’s school admitted about 150 seventh graders this month. When their reading levels were tested before term began, six students, or four per cent of their intake, are reading at Grade 4 level or above. The remaining read and comprehend below that already low standard – many are only able to recognise a few letters of the alphabet. Others like My Yute have memorised words but have no idea of their meaning or how to use them in a sentence. Jamaican Standard English is a familiar-but-foreign language to them.

Without more, these underachievers will follow My Yute up the down escalator into second form, and so on. The absentee rate at that school is 35 per cent. There is an explanation for that.

By Grade 9 or 10, some of the more ambitious boys achieve their dream – a bike – and school, incomprehensible and thus uninspiring, becomes an expensive optional extra in their lives. The habit for the better-looking girls is to evade the poverty at home and the inconvenience of the street by arriving on campus on their guy’s bike back, or if he is a ‘smuggler’ or a taximan, in his car.

Sadly, this school’s situation exists, to some extent, in a half of our high schools. It is at the early childhood and primary schools that the problem starts. But where are the wholesale reform plans for those sectors?

Parents have figured it out but have little recourse if you can’t afford prep school. At one of the best Catholic primary schools, there are over 2,000 applications for less than 200 Grade One places each year. Listen to Nigel Clarke extol the value of the education he got at St Richard’s Primary. The supreme task of political economy must be to bring all other schools to this level of quality. So far, we are failing.

Ten years ago, the Ministry of Education felt that a standard of 85 per cent proficiency in the literacy test at the Grade 4 level established a sufficient foundation for progression to higher grades. It is not so. The Grade 4 standard is too low. Also, there is reading regression to be factored in. Then, negative attitudinal factors diminish the value of literacy and schooling in the wider culture. Circus takes the place of bread. Finding money for Vybz’ New Year concert is a higher priority for giddy minds than the payment of the approximately $200,000 a year (roughly half that at My Yute’s campus) it costs to put out a high-school student properly.

BASICS FIRST, PLEASE

We need a revolution in education. Deal with the fundamentals before the frills: full attendance, breakfast nutrition, good manners and discipline, literacy and numeracy. Nothing else matters as much.

I know he means well, but Mr Holness’ idea of building a number of STEM Academies is misplaced. First, it will take years and unavailable billions to build them for the relatively few students who will be competent to benefit from them. As of now, the teachers do not exist to make such institutions effective. One big reason why every year’s mathematics results are so dismal is that a very large number of those teaching the subject are fearful, under-qualified and sometimes not qualified at all. I dare you to contradict me! Better to deal with the problems at My Yute’s school and the primary facility he came from. Expand those high schools with existing teachers but limited facilities in STEM subjects and achieve your worthy objective for a third of the cost, and in five instead of 15 years. Recall how long it took you as minister to realise the Cedar Grove project.

2030 FLOP

After all the hard-to-understand Planning Institute of Jamaica parsing of inevitable and soul-sapping failure, it is low education outcomes which lead to declining productivity, and a low-wage extractive economy which are turning the inspiring Vision 2030 into disappointment.

It is a sin for us to deny or neglect the flourishing of God’s children. The Bible teaches that the wages of sin is death - dashing the dreams of emancipation, the hopes of independence, the trust binding a people together, the life prospects of My Yute, and the betrayal of the task reposed in our governors are all death-delivering.

We need to repent and do better.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.