PERHAPS the most extensive analysis yet of the performance of Jamaican students in the CXC exams has confirmed Campion College and Immaculate High as Jamaica’s two leading fifth-form high schools.

But what will likely be disturbing for the education authorities is the finding by the report’s main author Dr Dennis Minott that only 38 of the nearly 400 institutions that prepare students for secondary exams are doing an adequate job of it.

The numbers represent less than 10 per cent of the schools, which rate a grade of “C” or above in the ranking system devised by Minott’s A-Quest organisation.

A year ago, Minott ignited widespread debate on the state of schools in Jamaica when, based on the performance of Jamaican students in 16 subjects in the CXC’s 2003 Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) exams, he first ranked Jamaican schools.

Now, in a project jointly sponsored by the Jamaica Observer, Minott and his A-Quest team reviewed the performance of Jamaican students in all subjects in the CSEC and the advanced CAPE exams, between 2001 and 2004.

They analysed 781,000 exit records from CXC (Caribbean Examination Council) for the period, as well as 200,000 other bits of data from the Jamaican education ministry.

With this raft of information, including census data from schools going back to 1996, the A-Quest team was able to track the drop-out levels between third and fifth forms to determine retention ratios.

The retention ratio – combined with a ratio determined by the number of subjects taken in the exams, against the minimum five deemed necessary for clerical jobs or sixth form matriculation – were used as a discounting measure in evaluating all high schools, community colleges and similar institutions.

The effect of this was to remove the bias enjoyed on performance results by institutions that culled students or prevent significant numbers, who they perceive would have difficulty, from writing some exams.

Even with this more rigorous analysis, it was largely the same institutions – except for a handful of schools – that occupied the top 20 positions as in the 2004 study, although in some cases specific ranks have changed.

At the fifth-form level, top of the rank was Campion, which shifted slots with Immaculate High School, although both Roman Catholic-founded schools had an A+ rating.

The difference between them was the marginal gap in the crude and adjusted fifth form scores, which measure the scores the schools received for the performance of their students over the four years, before and after being adjusted for the retention and take ratios.

However, Wolmer’s High School for Girls was displaced from third position by Montego Bay High School – which was 11th in the narrower report of 2004 – followed by Glenmuir High in fourth spot.

However, Minott stressed that the findings of the analysis had far more profound implications than the ranking of schools. There was the wider issue of performance and accountability.

“Of 400 institutions preparing our adolescents for CSEC, less than 10 per cent (of all institutions) are performing satisfactorily,” the authors say in the document.

“That small percentage obtained grades A+ to C in our system of ranking for their 2001-2004 performance.”

The A-Quest researchers, in making the point, stressed that anecdotal and other evidence suggesting a link between the culling of students from regular high schools and passing them to private institutions – where some teachers may have connections – to prepare them fox CXC exams.

Says the report: “. The study encountered evidence of unethical and shady practices on the part of a small but willful minority of high school teachers with respect to the otherwise legitimate provision of “extra lessons”.

“Though the authors have no quarrel with extra lessons per se, we have to report that a fair number of teachers and administrators appear to be colluding in hobbling publicly-schooled students as to the number and types of subjects they may sit at CSEC in their original schools.

Such educators do seem bent on producing their students as “cows to milk” by local joint venture teaching enterprises in which salaried teachers have conflicting pecuniary or other interests.”

“In a word, several of Jamaica’s high schools and teachers are out of control,” the report concluded.