Dr Dennis Minott remained unapologetic yesterday for his controversial ranking of Jamaican high schools, insisting that academic results were the best, and internationally recognised way to rate the performance of educational institutions.

“Nobody believes in extra-curricula activities more than me,” Minott told the Sunday Observer. “I had (as a child) extra-curricula activities and that is the way that I raised my children.

“But I don’t buy the argument that exam performance is not the way to judge the performance of children or schools. The fact is, parents who send their children to school expect them to pass exams. The passing of exams is the measure of academic performance internationally.”

Dr Minott used the results of last year’s CXC secondary exams in 16 core subjects to determine the ranking of schools, having also applied a mathematical formula to deflate the effect of the screening on performance.

The results, published last week by the Sunday Observer, showed that from the 148 schools measured, Immaculate Conception High School in Kingston was the top performer, followed by Campion College, Wolmer’s High School for Girls and Bishop Gibson High in Montego Bay. Several former elite schools were low on the list, while many relatively recently upgraded high schools had made strides.

But the document also showed that generally, Jamaican high schools performed poorly. Only at 20 schools was the pass rate between 75 per cent and 100 per cent. Only at nine was the success rate between 80 per cent and 100 per cent – schools which Dr Minott graded between A-plus and B.

The study caused a furore in the education establishment. Complaints ranged from straight accusations of bias, to arguments that the study was not longitudinal, that it did not take into account the socio-economic background, the low literacy levels of some of the students entering high schools, or that the subjects analysed were not sufficiently representative of technical high schools.

Critics also argued that such studies are naturally skewed in favour of elite schools which get the best students, while others, especially in inner-city communities, struggled with ill-prepared students and few resources.

But Minott, who used raw data from the National Council of Education for his analysis, pointed out that he had made statements pointing to the improved performance of some schools. He, however, stressed that his study was intended to provide a “snap shot” of current performance in high schools.

“When I look at the balance sheet I get a snap shot of what the situation is now,” he said. “Next year’s study you can look at the performance against this year.”

Added Minott: “No one needs to lecture me on longitudinal studies. I was the one that did an analysis looking at performance in schools between 1988 and 1994. That (a longitudinal study) is what we plan to get to.”

The current study, which he intends to repeat next year, Minott stressed, was part of an effort to hold the managers accountable.

“We have to foster a culture of accountability,” Minott said. “We need to get out of the habit of obfuscating and cut through the fluff. There is too much red-herring.”

Hopefully, he said, with surveys such as his own, schools will get into a process of “friendly rivalry”.

Many people who complain that formulas, other than straight academic performance should be used to judge schools, were mostly seeking to hide behind woolly excuses, Minott suggested.

“They know that we don’t have the instruments to measure those other things,” he said. “We need to make a judgement, and academic performance is the best instrument we have.”

Minott lashed at critics who had failed to take on the substance of his analysis in critical debate, but engaged in peripheral issues or personal attacks.

“We are in serious problem, which speaks to the issue of leadership, when a principal who has looked at the results and can’t express himself in terms of the analysis, engages in ad hominem argument,” Minott said.

Minott conceded the observation by some technical high schools that they did a wider range of subjects than was captured in the analysis. He said that this would be remedied in the next study.

However, that omission did not materially affect the current findings, Minott said, because the number of technical schools was relatively small (12 or eight per cent of the study) and only a small proportion of the cohort did these subjects. “We congratulate these schools for the observation. Next year we will oblige them,” Minott said.

Minott also pointed to two errors in the study – the fact that Physics did not show up in Immaculate’s data and that five subjects were missing from St Catherine High School. Neither of these, Minott said, impaired the analysis.

“Immaculate would have slightly improved its performance, having got a 94 per cent pass in Physics and St Catherine would have been just about the same position,” he said.