Sixth-form programme wrong approach – Thwaites

WESTERN BUREAU:

Former education minister, Ronald Thwaites, says the Government’s plan to roll out a sixth-form pathways programme among secondary schools is the wrong approach in trying to improve Jamaica’s education sector.

Instead, the retired Central Kingston member of parliament says the Government should consider utilising higher-level learning institutions, such as community colleges or the HEART/NSTA Trust.

“Between the community colleges and the higher levels of the HEART Trust, that’s exactly what they want to do – to provide larger technical and vocational training to the graduates of high school who were not disposed, or are of a competence to continue grammar-school education in the traditional sixth form as we know it,” Thwaites said. “We have spent a large amount of money to continue with those institutions which are significantly underused or abused.”

Thwaites was responding to the Government’s proposal for a mandatory sixth-form pathways programme, which would see secondary education increase from five to seven years, and students exiting the formal system at age 18 with an associate degree or its equivalent.

But Thwaites, who served as education minister from 2012 to 2016 under the Portia Simpson Miller-led government, argues that the move could also have legal implications.

“The effort now to put them into other institutions but keep them registered to the original institutions – that is a legal nightmare, apart from being a logistical impossibility.”

Linvern Wright, president of the Jamaica Association of Principals of Secondary Schools, says that if the education ministry’s plan is to succeed, the Government will need to build 52 new high schools.

“The intent of the programme is good, but what we have proposed is that it needs an audit to assess the number of spaces that are available within the system, because you are going to be absorbing 52,000 students over two years – that’s akin to about 52 new high schools in terms of the numbers alone,” Wright said. “It’s impossible for the system to absorb that number.”

Wright discloses that his association of secondary-school principals have bluntly told the Ministry of Education that the proposed policy is not practical.

“What we have said to the ministry directly is that it is a great idea, but in terms of the logistics of the policy it is a bad policy,” said Wright, who is also the principal of William Knibb High School.

“Your aim of having your high-school students gaining some kind of qualification in an additional two years is great, but you need to put the logistics and the framework in place to ensure that when it’s been implemented, you can do this effectively and efficiently.”

Added Wright, “We have not prepared the wicket to ensure that have the resources in place – human resources in terms of teaching skills and the equipment that would be necessary to facilitate the programmes.”

He also argues that there is the urgent need for more labs in terms of technology, home economics and industrial arts.