I made a data request to the Ministry of Education on June 11, 2015. I did not think it was a big deal. If policies are data-driven, the data should precede policy. I respect Permanent Secretary Dr Grace McLean’s explanation about this being in the middle of the release of Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) results, but I cannot accept it as an excuse.

A part of the request (concerning the tablet in schools) has been satisfied. The other part about government support of Mount St Joseph Catholic School in Mandeville has not been forthcoming. I want to examine the data and hopefully stimulate a real discussion about whether some of our challenges are about lack of resources or about how we spend what is available.

I am willing to accept that I do not understand what I see, which is why I sought the ministry’s response. Since two writing cycles would have passed while I wait, I will look at the school anyway and at the tablet in schools programme in the future.

According to the school’s website: “In mid-2013, the Ministry of Education approached the Roman Catholic Diocese of Mandeville to explore…whether it wished to establish an educational institution in the town of Mandeville. The initiative…was an effort to assist in addressing the space deficit in public secondary schools in Mandeville…thereby increasing access to quality…educational opportunities for students.” The school opened August 2014. Most of us will agree that it happened with remarkable speed.

It was a curiosity for me for multiple reasons. Mandeville, from Willowgate Plaza to Park Crescent, is chaotic because of the market, the lack of parking, and rundown infrastructure. A large part of it also has to do with the location of the schools and the influx of children in the town at certain times. Previously, there were three public high schools — all within an approximately 15 minutes’ walk of each other. The incorporation of formerly private Belair increased the number to four in 2013. The new high school added one more.

Large parts of the populations of the three original high schools — Manchester, Bishop Gibson and de Carteret College — travel from rural communities 15-20 miles away, and from St Elizabeth in some cases. Since Belair and Mount St Joseph are now public, I assume that this is the case as well.

There are multiple negatives associated with the long travel distances. These include children having to leave home too early and reducing sleep time, which is critical to optimal performance. Public transportation is also uncertain, and unsafe in many ways, and road conditions are bad. In addition to all of this, transportation expenses create huge strain on rural families and it leaves the children vulnerable to exploitation.

Compared to the older schools in the town, May Day, Cross Keys, Winston Jones, Bellefield, Porus, and Christiana are strategically located to serve surrounding communities. If more students were to attend them, it would have a positive impact on the issues raised. The problem is, if one uses the single crude criteria of the number of CSEC subjects passed at the end of five years in one of these schools to evaluate their worthiness, they are all underperforming.

In a recent analysis, the older schools scored between 77 and 94 per cent, while the new schools scored from a low of five per cent at Christiana to a high of 54 per cent at May Day, which, along with Denbigh High (57 per cent), is one of two standout schools in the national ranking. There is only a two- to four-point difference between Denbigh and May Day and Jamaica College, and both are ahead of Cornwall College in Montego Bay and Calabar in Kingston. Nationally, slightly over 25 per cent of schools are succeeding at attaining five CSEC subhects, including mathematics and English.

Of course, there is something extremely infantile in using the GSAT as a filter — placing the best-performing students in the older, better resourced schools, and the worst performers in the weaker schools — and at the end of five years, comparing the performance of both sets of students and expecting that the results will be any different from what they are. For this reason, the sheer effort of schools like May Day and Denbigh is laudable. Further support from the Ministry of Education would make complete sense to help them build on their successes.

The newer schools need massive injection of capital to provide better facilities, administrative capability, specialist teachers, and programmatic support to make them competitive. It is against this background that I posed the following questions to the ministry of education regarding the investment in Mount St Joseph High School, if the Ministry had a part of its strategy, placing children in schools closer to home in 2015:

1. What is the relationship between Government and the school?

2. Why did the Government invest in this project at this time?

3. How much did the Government contribute to its establishment, and what is the level of ongoing support?

4. Barring government support, how is the school funded?

I also asked the ministry the annual cost of administering the GSAT.

Like former prime minister and Minister of Education Andrew Holness, I don’t believe this exam has any place in the society. “We…cannot continue with the two-tier education system…we must not have a two-tier education system and… tests that are used to do that kind of stratification reinforces this,” Holness said in 2009. In 2013, in an address at St Catherine High School, he said: “There is so much being said about how we are going to grow the economy… A large part of that…equation is education. You may be able to solve some of the short-term problems by managing your fiscal account… but, the real long-term solution to growth is actually education.”

It behoves us to look at the staggering failure of the system, contemplate the lack of economic growth and how it correlates with inequality, “the by-product of systems and structures, intentional policies and ingrained prejudices that have over many decades tilted the scales in favour of some, while limiting opportunity for many others”.

Grace Virtue, PhD, is a social justice advocate.