In recent days there has been considerable public attention focused on the courageous headmaster, Cleveland Thomas, who has taken a principled stand against the Ministry of Education’s policy of automatic promotion. The ministry in response claims that at Mr Thomas’ school there is a seventeen-year-old in first form and cases of children repeating a form two and three times. If this is true, I wish to be informed of the special interventions the school has put in place to address the needs of these children. Surely the school’s administration is operating under the principle that every child can learn. That every child has a unique learning style that must be discovered and then teachers develop methodologies to cater for those styles.
The issue here is not if the HM should be supported for refusing to promote challenged children. The real issue is ensuring the necessary effective interventions are put in place to address the needs of the thousands whom the education system has failed. This is not a Christianburg Wismar problem, it is a national problem. Across the country, in scores of schools, there are an unacceptable number of illiterate children dutifully passing through our education system.
While we must support Mr Thomas in his stance that brings attention to this cancer in our society, we have to ensure we do not send the wrong message. We cannot send a message to HMs, ministry officials and the government that it is ok to repeatedly fail our children. We must let them know that it is their responsibility, with our participation, to ensure our children learn. It is the ministry’s responsibility to develop broad strategies and policies to address this critical problem. Let’s have a white paper, let’s have a blue paper, let’s have something that would ignite an informed public debate on the issue. We need a medium-term programme aimed at raising our test scores, removing illiteracy from our schools and equipping our children for work in a technological society.
It is indeed a disgrace that instead of using the courageous stance of the headmaster as a catalyst for a new agenda to transform how the education system works, Minister of Education Shaik Baksh dishes the dirt on the headmaster at a press conference. Shame on him. This man just lacks vision, is a misfit as Minister of Education and should be removed without delay. How can we have a Minister of Education who has demonstrated publicly he has no problem sweeping the plight of our children under the carpet? How can we have a man who is comfortable condemning our children to the dustbin of illiteracy?
One issue to consider is linking teacher assessment to student performance as is done in other jurisdictions. It is apposite to note that our teachers also enjoy a system of automatic promotion based on years of service. While I agree that teaching professionals should be guaranteed some measure of upward mobility I also believe that there must be room for the performing teacher or school administrator to be rewarded. Certainly I don’t mean rewarding Queen’s College and St Margaret’s for turning out the most passes. Let’s have a look at how teachers move test scores from year to year. How do we reward a teacher who moves a class from illiterate to literate? How do we reward the teacher who moves test scores from an average of 30% to 60%? These are issues we have to address and we will be on our way to correcting our problem.
Yours faithfully,
James K McAllister
