Dear Editor,

In the letter entitled ‘Let’s Track Our Children Through Schools’, published Tuesday, September 2, 2014, Sandra M Taylor attempts to defend the way we stream and screen students in Jamaica using old specious arguments. There is, in fact, no empirical evidence which shows that placing bright students together in one class leads to more effective learning. It only makes it easier for the lucky teachers who get bragging rights from excellent results.

There is nothing necessarily wrong with elitism in education. But an elite school should have an elite programme. The logic in streaming students is to allow those who are most able to do more than what others do. But as Hyacinth Evans points out in her seminal work Inside Jamaican Schools, we tend to stream to help the teacher and not the student.

In my view, we stream and screen to help the school build a reputation. It is a myth that weak students keep back bright students. Motivated students will do well anywhere. The results show this to be true every year. Just attend a CSEC awards ceremony and take note of the wide range of schools that the awardees attend and you will realise that this is the case.

In the age of the Internet, gifted students can help themselves quite easily. I, as well as other colleagues of mine, have monitored and mentored a few such students who wanted to take advanced math courses that were not offered at the school. The students used websites and only needed our help now and then. All of them were successful.

It is in some of the ‘new secondary’ schools that we in fact have the most sensible approach. Frequently, bright students end up being placed in these schools, usually because they did poorly in one GSAT subject which brought down their average score. These students are allowed to attend across shifts and take more than the required seven subjects. I have known of quite a few who ended up with nine, 10 and 11subjects. Being in schools where most students are underperforming has not prevented them from excelling.

In Jamaica we send students all over the place to do what is essentially the same programme. This has a devastating effect on many who have to go to schools very far from home. We need our brightest students for leadership and they are unlikely to be well prepared for that role in nerd ghettos. They should be nurtured alongside a wide range of students. What we need are comprehensive schools in each neighbourhood with the widest range of students. They should be streamed after grade nine into clusters that would allow them to be prepared according to their ability.

Lastly, the decision to enter students for any subject should be ultimately left with the parent. The school, through the subject teacher, should advise the parent about the likely outcome. But only the parent should have the right to bar a student from taking a subject in an exam at a school which the student attended for five years. At present the Government pays exam fees for math and English, as well as a science subject. It is reasonable if the school recommends that the exam fee not be paid for those students whom they do not recommend. But it is both immoral, and I suspect illegal, for a student to be forced to pay additional entry fees outside the school to sit an exam offered at the school which he/she attends. When a child has been barred from sitting an exam after five years, on the basis that he is not prepared, isn’t the school still responsible for his lack of preparation as much as they are for those who are well prepared and earn grade ones? If the child takes it outside, who is going to take credit or blame for the success or failure — the invigilator at the examination centre?

R Howard Thompson

Mandeville

howardthompson507@yahoo.com