Dear Editor,

I note with interest the recent announcement at a function by Education Minister Ronald Thwaites that high school dropouts will soon get the chance to earn their high school diploma through a partnership of the e-Learning Project, the Jamaica Library Service and the Jamaica Foundation for Lifelong Learning.

Minister Thwaites promised to provide further details on the initiative at a later date. However, I am left to wonder what has prompted Minister Thwaites to so move when a similar initiative, the High School Equivalency Programme (HISEP), was launched in 2006 to begin that September, after going through a pilot phase in 2004. Was that programme discontinued or deemed a failure?

HISEP was developed as a joint initiative involving the National Council on Technical and Vocational Education, the Jamaica Foundation for Lifelong Learning, the HEART Trust/National Training Agency, and the then Ministry of Education and Youth.

Like the initiative announced by Minister Thwaites, HISEP was designed to give high school dropouts a second chance at a secondary level education, focusing on several subject areas: language and communication, literature, culture and the arts, mathematics, science and technology, and society and citizenship. The successful completion of HISEP would earn the learners a High School Equivalency Diploma.

Although I was very supportive of HISEP as I am of this supposedly new but basically similar initiative by Minister Thwaites, what exactly would be the purpose of one obtaining such a diploma, especially when the CSEC exams are really what tertiary institutions and employers typically require or use to evaluate applicants?

To what specifically would the programme for high school dropouts be equivalent? I doubt it would be equivalent to one graduating from high school with some CSEC subjects.

We do not have a standard high school diploma that certifies that one has completed high school at a level of competence that at least basically prepares him for the working world and/or for further schooling or training. Truth be told, there are many people “graduating from” high school who are functionally illiterate.

We therefore would have to ensure a standard high school diploma programme for all high school graduates that has some meaningful value before we can talk about an equivalency.

I trust when the minister speaks further on the initiative, sufficient clarity will be provided as to the objective and expected usefulness of such an initiative.

Kevin KO Sangster

sangstek@msn.com