The vaunted St George’s College on North Street, Kingston was ranked 49th out of 52 traditional Jamaican high schools, placing behind many high schools with a less spectacular tradition of academic excellence, in a survey ranking fifth formers’ performance in the CXC’s 2003 Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) exams.

With arguably the best physical infrastructure – a mini-stadium, spacious classrooms, excellent furniture and the like – St George’s placed after more resource-challenged schools like St Catherine High (17th); Morant Bay High (22nd); Marymount High (24th) and Tivoli Gardens High (45th).

St George’s lowly placing was being blamed on a high turnover among teachers and a lack of unity among stakeholders. In the last six years, the school has changed three administration heads and its high turnover rate of teachers has been described by former principal Hector Stephenson as “phenomenal”.

“There probably is no other high school with a teacher turnover rate as St George’s College,” Stephenson told the Sunday Observer. “The turnover rate in the last three or four years has been phenomenal. If you have teachers coming or going and you are working with inexperienced teachers, every year you are starting over.”

Stephenson, who now heads the CXC (Caribbean Examinations Council) Overseas Office as executive director and local registrar, was unable to give precise figures of attrition rate at the time he left in 1998. Neither was the Sunday Observer able to get the reasons for the high staff turnover rate and recent figures from staff at the school, who when contacted, would not comment. Both the St George’s College principal, Lloyd Fearon, and the school’s board chairman, Father Jim Webb, were either unavailable or out of office.

But Stephenson, who served the school for 16 years, six as principal, said the second major problem was a lack of unity among stakeholders in the school community. “You have various players – old boys, Jesuits, teachers, administration – but I don’t think there is a coming together of ideas as to how the institution can move forward. Everybody connected to the school must take responsibility for what is going on.”

He noted in comparison, that neighbouring school and friendly North Street rivals, Kingston College, which placed 14th, did not have nearly the same turnover rate as St George’s and stakeholders of that institution worked together to move the institution ahead.

The islandwide ranking of schools was done as part of the A-QUEST Fifth Form Performance survey, compiled last month by A-QUEST head, Dr Dennis Minott, from data provided by the National Council of Education.

The school’s low ranking will come as a surprise to many because of the long-established perception of St George’s as a top school with high academic performance and among the most sought after high schools for boys sitting the Grade Six Achievement Test each year.

The century-old St George’s has produced seven Rhodes Scholars in the last 15 years, and the question will be asked how such an esteemed institution could have fallen so low in the performance list of traditional high schools islandwide.

Providing his own explanation, Stephenson said: “Schools go through cycles – all have their troughs and peaks, but those troughs and peaks are a function of the school communities coming and working together. However, a high school is very complex, and so when you are looking at reasons why they are not performing you have to look far and wide.”

The education ministry supports this view. According to Adelle Brown, the acting chief education officer, there were several factors to look at before judging a school’s performance.

“The most important factors are teacher quality and leadership (but) there are many others – societal, home, (school) resources and the students themselves. Never underestimate the students themselves who should take the matter of learning in their own hands,” she said.

In the meantime, Brown disclosed that the low performance of many students in a number of subjects, had spurred the ministry to step up efforts to develop a plan, working with teachers of the current fourth form (grade 10) students in selected schools to improve CSEC passes in English Language, Mathematics, Geography and several science subjects.