EDUCATION Minister Ronald Thwaites yesterday rushed to allay fears that students who sat this year’s Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) would not be placed in the schools of their choice, but instead, at institutions closest to where they live.

There was widespread concern following a report on the website of the Government’s information arm, the Jamaica Information Service (JIS), which said the education ministry would be “ensuring that students entering secondary school this year are placed in institutions close to where they live”.

The education minister stressed to the Jamaica Observer that 75 per cent, or 28,852 of GSAT students will be placed according to preference, and the capacity of the schools that they have opted for. He said this is “just as it always has been”.

Thwaites noted that it is the remaining 25 per cent (9,618) who did not achieve the grades needed to place them at their preferred schools, who would be manually placed in institutions nearest to where they live. The education minister described this measure as “an intensification of what has already existed, where we tried to place those students who have not gained one of their preferential schools, in a location which is more appropriate to their capacity to travel to and from”.

“In the past, they were manually placed in a random fashion. It is particularly those that we want this year, to intervene, and wherever appropriate to place them closer to where they live. We don’t want to take away the parents’ preferences, what we want to do is modulate when you have an excessive distance,” he elaborated.

Lamenting that only 83 per cent of students regularly attend high school, Thwaites argued: “That same proportion of students are the ones that attend school only sporadically. The difficulty of affording transportation and lunch money should not complicate the attendance at school of that group, and therefore it’s much safer and convenient for them to go to school nearer to where they live”.

At the same time, the ministry is urging parents whose children get into the schools of their choice, but then find it impossible to afford transportation costs, to apply for transfers to institutions which are nearer to their homes.

He stressed that for now, no widescale zoned placement is on the table. “We will cross that bridge when we get to it. That’s not where we are now,” Thwaites said.

Yesterday, amidst the public outcry, Opposition spokeswoman on education, Senator Kamina Johnson Smith called on the minister to urgently clarify his position on GSAT placement this year, stating in a release that: “When the ministry is able to generally equalise the resources available to our schools; when the performance of primary and secondary schools are generally improved across the board, geographic placement will make sense. At that time, distance and choice will be less of a concern for parents and children, and parents and schools can be properly notified of any such major policy change before the start of an exam cycle.”

Her political party colleague and caretaker for East Central St Catherine Alando Terrelonge described the move as one that would be “elitist and nonsensical”.

But Thwaites dismissed the notion, further arguing that for the past three years focus has in fact been put on lifting the standards of the schools which are “not usually chosen as often by parents”.

He said as part of the process, technical and vocational programmes have been introduced into 110 of 168 such schools, to better help students to be job ready, and improve their aptitudes. “Those schools tended to be the ones that were on the shift and where students were getting almost 20 per cent less instructional time,” the minister said.

Fifteen schools were removed from the shift system last year, with another 40 set to be taken off during this financial year. Twenty-four of these schools also benefited from improvement works to their physical plant, he noted.

Thwaites also pointed to the implementation of mathematics and literature coaches to assist teachers whose “weaknesses have led to inadequate results at examination levels among their students”. He added that a robust behaviour modification programme has been implemented to help turn around students whose poor socialisation has led to them not placing enough value on education.

Additionally, Thwaites pointed out, the ministry is now demanding greater training for principals and teachers, particularly in difficult schools.

“Watch us this year. We are going to be investing more and more,” Thwaites stated.

When the GSAT came up for review in 2010, a zoning policy for placement, based on location, was among the discussions. But the idea was swiftly rejected as elitist, and robbing children from the poorer socio-economic backgrounds of the chance to attend the most sought-after high schools.