1) The Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) was administered to 44,000 11-year-olds in Jamaica last week to determine placement into secondary schools. 2) While access to primary education in Jamaica is nearly universal, quality and performance have been ongoing issues, and GSAT is now seen more as a problem than the achievement test it was intended to be due to placement difficulties. 3) Despite massive expansion of secondary education since the 1960s, the majority of students have not achieved a level that allows transition to tertiary education or professional work, highlighting ongoing challenges in Jamaica's education system.

1. Education in Independence
Published: Sunday | March 25, 2012 2 Comments
Students of Sts Peter and Paul Prep School frolic after the completion of their Grade Six
Achievement Test sitting last Friday. - Rudolph Brown/Photographer
Martin Henry, Contributor
This year's writing of the Grade Six Achievement Test went by last Thursday and Friday
and 44,000 'traumatised' 11-year-olds - and their parents - can breathe again, at least until
results time in June.
More students registered than actually took the test. Of the 52,000 who registered, the Ministry
of Education 'deferred' 3,500 to next year's sitting and 4,500 were barred from GSAT, having not
achieved mastery in four sittings of the Grade Four Literacy Test. The majority of the 44,000
candidates are vying for a place in around 20 top-tiered high schools, while there are about 150
secondary-level schools in the country. These numbers, from a purely historical perspective, are
very interesting.
As a quick demographic aside, at 52,000 potential candidates, there are fewer children taking the
test than the near 60,000 who did so in its early years, an indication that the population growth
rate is slowing.
Dogged by several difficulties, GSAT, unfortunately, is now more widely regarded as a problem
rather than the major achievement in education policy and development that it is. GSAT replaced
the Common Entrance Examination (CEE) in 1999. A Norman Manley administration, with
Florizel Glasspole as minister of education, introduced the CEE in 1958, which offered an
unprecedented 2,000 free places in high schools each year. Prior to the CEE, the majority of
high-school students were the fee-paying children of the well-to-do, with only a handful of
parish scholarships available through which the bright poor could gain access. The CEE, an
entrance examination pure and simple, offered merit-based scholarships to a far larger number of
children, revolutionising access to secondary education.
But the CEE soon hit major snags. While increasing the capacity of existing high schools, about
45 of them from colonial times, the Government did precious little to increase the number of
schools. St Thomas, for instance, did not have even one high school before 1960. It soon became
obvious that the children of the better off, benefiting from fee-paying private prep school
education, were seriously outperforming children in government primary schools for scarce high-
school places.
To rectify the problem, the Government of the 1960s, early into Independence, with Edwin Allen
as minister of education, introduced the 70:30 ratio in favour of the far more numerous but more
weakly performing primary-school students.

2. Universal access
One of the better legacies of the colonial era was the dense network of primary schools across
the country. Nearly every village had its own, and every child was within walking distance of a
primary school. Even today, there are 'uneconomical' primary schools with a couple of teachers
and a couple dozen students. The geography and settlement patterns of Jamaica, a mostly
mountainous country, dictate that primary education has to be highly localised if universal access
is to be achieved.
We came to Independence with pretty much universal access and have maintained it. Schools
were built in new urban centres and added to expanding townships. Access was never the issue at
the primary level, but quality and performance.
The Government of the 1960s vigorously set about expanding access to secondary education,
but, in hindsight, went about it the wrong way. Armed with World Bank money, 50 junior
secondary schools were 'built by Labour'. The junior secondary school took tens of thousands of
students to grade nine, age 15, and left them high and dry. The Secondary School Certificate was
a ticket to nowhere. It did not articulate with further education or with work.
The most intractable GSAT problem, the problem of placement, is a direct consequence of the
junior secondary school. Those schools, over the next decades, were progressively 'upgraded' to
new secondary schools, and then upgraded high schools which have never been able to catch up
with the performance of the traditional grammar high school. The introduction of samples of
other types of secondary schools created a hodgepodge. In Jamaican Society and High
Schooling' (1990), Professor Errol Miller writes: "... In the 1980s, a plethora of secondary-
school types exist in the Jamaican educational system: traditional high schools, technical high
schools, comprehensive high schools, agricultural secondary schools, new secondary schools,
and vocational schools. To this mix was added in the 1990s, as a flashback to the 1960s, the
junior high school."
Universal literacy
Quality and performance have been critical issues in education in Independence. The failure of
the primary school to deliver universal literacy led to the creation of the Jamaican Movement for
the Advancement of Literacy (JAMAL). JAMAL, intended to be a short-term fix, substantially
reduced adult literacy but ran for more than 25 years under that name before its transformation
into a broader adult-education programme. The primary school kept pumping out illiterates who,
with open access, went into and through the secondary-school system, pulling down the
performance of the non-traditional schools.
But going back to the numbers, only 4,500 students of a cohort of 52,000 have not achieved a
level of mastery in the Grade Four Literacy Test after multiple attempts. That's 8.65 per cent.
While no cause for comfort in the quest for universal literacy, it does show what can be achieved
when we are serious about literacy.

3. CXC examinations, which began at the end of the 1970s, provided an effective means of tracking
performance in the secondary-school system within the country and across Caribbean territories.
Thanks to our learner readiness and quality issues, Jamaica has consistently ranked near the
bottom of CXC performance among CARICOM states. Fewer than 10 per cent of CXC cohorts
were passing the minimum five subjects, including English and mathematics, required for entry
into college-level post-secondary education. Most of the students in the new secondary schools
weren't even candidates. So despite the massive expansion of secondary education from the '60s
forward, the majority of the nation's children have not been achieving a secondary-level
education from which they can transition into tertiary education or entry-level professional work.
The HEART Trust/NTA was the response of the Seaga Government of the 1980s to the absence
of achievement of proper secondary education and the acquisition of skills by the majority of the
nation's young people. HEART/NTA marks 30 years of existence this year, and the problem is
still with us, with some 70 per cent of the labour force having no certified skills.
Four years before Independence, the Government established the Jamaica Institute of
Technology (JIT) to provide post-secondary technical education beyond what the Kingston
Technical School, established in 1896, offered. JIT was renamed the College of Arts, Science
and Technology (CAST) in 1959 and was transformed into the University of Technology in
1995.
In hindsight, Government took far too long to establish national universities alongside the
regional University of the West Indies. CAST had to fight with its own Government for degree-
granting status. Why is there only a single UTech (albeit now multi-campus, including a Western
Jamaica campus) with only 12,000 students? Why is there no articulated system of technical-
vocational education from primary to tertiary level, a need which was recognised from at least
the 1940s? For most of its existence, the HEART Trust/NTA wasn't even part of the education
system, but was a standalone attached to Industry?
Matching any of the previous 'revolutions' in education in importance was the significant
expansion of post-secondary education in the 1990s, pushing the post-sec population up from a
mere five per cent of cohort to around 15 per cent today. There has been an explosion of onshore
and offshore universities.
Current trajectory
A serious emergent problem is the adequacy of supply of qualified students coming out of
secondary education prepared for tertiary education. On current trajectory, of the 52,000 GSAT
cohort this year (those eligible to take the test, not those who actually took it), no more than
about 5,000, after five years of secondary education, will qualify for matriculation into college-
level education. The wastage of the nation's young people is enormous and shocking.
The GSAT itself is part of a major development in education in the 1990s, the establishment of
the National Assessment Programme (NAP), consisting of a Grade One Readiness Inventory, a
Grade Three Diagnostic Test in English and mathematics, a Grade Four Literacy Test, and the

4. Grade Six Achievement Test. NAP provides a powerful tool for the management of primary
education.
In the anxiety of GSAT preparation and writing, both Government and people are forgetting that
GSAT was supposed to be an 'achievement test' for the whole of primary education, and not
merely a placement test for secondary school. With the scarcity of desirable 'good' places, for
good historical reasons, the test is bound to be a fiercely contested placement competition. A
GSAT review is now getting under way. Education Minister Ronnie Thwaites said there is
overwhelming dissatisfaction with the GSAT curriculum, with the method of testing and with
placement.
Vision 2030 has a whole National Outcome section for 'World Class Education and Training'.
"Under Vision 2030, our country will develop an education and training system that produces
well-rounded and qualified individuals who will be empowered to learn for life, able to function
as creative and productive individuals in all spheres of our society and be competitive in a
global context."
We are into 50 years of Independence; and 2030 is a mere 18 years away. But that's more than
enough time to transform early-childhood education to produce universal learning readiness;
primary education to produce universal literacy, broadly conceived; to have the vast majority of
secondary-level graduates earning a standardised high-school diploma; to create a system of
articulated technical and vocational education; and to have at least a third of the population
achieving degree-level tertiary education.
But we will need a vibrant economy to absorb those products of an upgraded education system.
At the moment, we are exporting some 80 per cent of our few best successes, tertiary graduates.
Martin Henry is a communication specialist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and
medhen@gmail.com.
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