A Jamaican-born professor who taught at Harvard medical school, says he can almost double performance averages among primary and secondary students in half the time proposed by the Government’s recent Task Force Report on Education reform.Harvard professor says he can lift school performance faster than Education Task Force Report

Dr John Fray, who also taught at the University of Massachusetts, insists that using the ancient Thoth method, with some modification of his own, he can train teachers to raise the overall GSAT performance average from 51 per cent to 91 per cent, in less than five years.

In contrast, the Education Task Force Report has set a target of 10 years for the education ministry to raise primary and secondary students’ performance by a maximum of 37 per cent, to 88 per cent.

Fray has already tested his Thoth Programme for Science Training locally, and found that trained teachers on the programme were able to lift overall performance of their primary students in the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) by 40 per cent above the national average.

Among the latest disciples to have been won over by Fray is no less than the chairman of the Education Task Force himself, Dr Rae Davis, president of the University of Technology (UTech) where he is currently experimenting with trainee teachers in the use of science and technology to “substantially” increase CXC performance among secondary students.

Fray is incorporating the Thoth strategies into a new ‘Science in Education’ degree programme, which started last Monday in an initiative led by Davis.

Davis explains that although Fray had initially been working with primary school teachers, he felt the Thoth methodology would be appropriate for teachers at any level of the system.

“I have now thrown it open to our students as an option and they have taken to it very well. I am expecting to see some exciting results coming out of this. not only in their performance at UTech, but more importantly, when they go into the schools,” he tells the Sunday Observer.

Davis’ 14-member Task Force, in its report made public last month, gave more than 100 recommendations on how the government, through the education ministry, could completely overhaul the education system. The Thoth programme was not listed among the recommendations.

Thoth is the English translation for Tehuti, an Egyptian who invented writing, astronomy, numbers, geometry, dice and draughts. Fray researched the work, and incorporated some of Thoth’s methods into this new programme for teachers, but added a few extras – for example, technology and team work to ensure life-long learning.

“We didn’t feel it appropriate to name a specific (teaching) methodology,” Davis says in explaining the absence of Thoth in the Task Force recommendations. “You would expect that if you develop teachers in terms of licensing and re-licensing they would expose themselves to various methodologies.”

But the task of deciding which methodology was adopted should be left up to the principals, teachers and the ministry’s curriculum officers, he adds.

The sweeping reforms recommended by the task force, expected to cost the government $520 billion over the next 10 years, propose to lift secondary students’ performance in CXC’s CSEC (Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate) Mathematics and English from 36 per cent and 45 per cent respectively to at least 60 per cent.

The aim, at the primary level, is to increase the national mean score in the five GSAT subjects from their current low of between 48 per cent and 67 per cent to 85 per cent.

Fray is convinced that these specific targets can be surpassed within five years using Thoth strategy, which is to train teachers the way scientists are trained. They would, in turn, use their scientific knowledge and skills to inspire, motivate and develop a new way of thinking and life-learning skills among those they teach.

“If these students (trainees) were substitute teachers in third forms in selected secondary schools, it would take two years to change performance in CSEC without any change in the curriculum,” Professor Fray says of his current students.

Fray started his experiment in Jamaica 11 years ago, when he collaborated with the National Council on Education and used the Thoth methodology as a teacher-training initiative in three schools – Ewarton Primary and Poly Ground Primary in St Catherine as well as St Peter Claver Primary in St Andrew.

Supported by a US$700,000 grant from a number of local and overseas agencies, he trained a dozen teachers who in turn trained over 300 more in four of the programme’s main components: team building; higher-order thinking; computer informatics, and physiology laboratory hands-on experience.

Principals and teachers in the participating schools still speak glowingly of its success.

“The programme did make an impact on our school,” notes Ewarton’s principal, Marjorie Edwards Bailey whose grade six class in 2001 produced the top five students in GSAT islandwide, each of them scoring above 97 per cent in all five subjects of the exam.

Kestine Morgan, a grade five teacher, who was one of six teachers from Ewarton to be trained, was just as pleased that the team work component brought out the best of student’s unique abilities and fostered an attitude of caring and sharing.

“The underlying theme is that no child has all the abilities, every child has something to offer,” she observes.

Students also became highly motivated and that drove the learning process, adds Hyacinth Sankey, another Ewarton teacher.

“They were always ready for class, their research skills were way above the norm and those children forced me to go and do research that I wouldn’t normally have done,” she admits.

Even now, 11 years later, she still uses the Thoth higher-order thinking and team-building strategies in her classes.

Teachers at Poly Ground Primary, located a mile away from Ewarton echo the same sentiments.

“Their (students) results at the GSAT were the overall highest we have ever had in the school, especially in science. It was the first we were having somebody scoring 98 in science,” says Beverly Jobson-Grant, who has been the school’s principal for more than 25 years.

“I am hoping that they find some money to continue doing the programme,” she urges.

Marie Palmer, grade 4 teacher at St Peter Claver Primary in St Andrew testifies that science grades peaked after the Thoth experiment at her school. In addition, “the students were able to speak more freely, express themselves much better and their self-esteem improved”.

As a result of its success, the school recently started a science room and is using Thoth methodology to keep students’ performance at peak levels.

Palmer is also one of six teachers who Fray took along to the University of Massachusetts during the summers of 1995 and 2000 for further hands-on laboratory training. She now assists Fray in the UTech classes.

“We are getting them (trainees) to move away from streaming (high school) students, but to get them to work co-operatively, recognising each others’ abilities and strengths. The whole aim is to make sure everybody achieves,” she says.