STARTING tomorrow, more than 90 students from four non-traditional high schools in rural Jamaica will be immersed in an intensive Rhodes Scholar-supported boot camp intended to improve their competence in maths and English at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) level.

The five-week camp is part of the TEACH Caribbean programme, a not-for-profit organisation established by a group of Jamaican Rhodes scholars. The main participants will be students from May Day and Mile Gully high schools in Manchester; and Brimmer Vale and Islington high schools in St Mary.

“Maths and English are foundation competencies which students need to move forward; however, many children continue to face serious challenges with the subjects. And, our students, particularly in our rural institutions, do not always get the same attention as those in urban schools with similar challenges,” stressed Mariame McIntosh Robinson, conceptualiser of TEACH Caribbean and a 1998 Rhodes Scholar.

Data from the Economic and Social Survey by the Planning Institute of Jamaica shows that fewer than 40 per cent of students who sit CSEC level pass the subject, while almost half fail maths. The performance among non-traditional schools is much lower.

TEACH Caribbean, which ran a three-year pilot with seed funding from the Rhodes Trust, has already observed marked improvements in the performance of students at May Day and Mile Gully, where the initiative started.

The Manchester cohort which started with TEACH Caribbean in the summer of 2013 improved their average scores from 54 per cent to 79 per cent in maths, and from 44 per cent to 69 per cent in English. For the 2014 set, maths scores increased from 30 per cent to 51 per cent; in English and from 50 per cent to 65 per cent.

“The ultimate metric will be the percentage of our students who achieve a pass ranging from grades one to three in maths and English when they sit the CSEC exams in 2017. Our goal is that the majority of our students must pass CSEC maths and English,” McIntosh Robinson emphasised.

At the summer camp, students will be taught by a team of local teachers and Rhodes scholars of various nationalities who are currently enrolled at Oxford University in England. This year, an Australian who taught for several years in the Teach for Australia programme, and an Indian, joined the programme.

TEACH Caribbean is structured to have students participate in the camps for four consecutive summers, starting after grade seven, until the beginning of grade 11, the grade at which CSEC is sat.

“The success of the programme so far has prompted us to expand it to other schools; and, therefore, this year we are adding a new group of students from St Mary who have just completed grade nine at Brimmer Vale and Islington High schools,” McIntosh Robinson explained.

The St Mary schools are currently receiving assistance under the JN Foundation’s iLead programme, a project being implemented in collaboration with the Ministry of Education to strengthen administrative and instructional leadership; as well as governance at schools in Portland, St Mary and St Thomas.

“Leadership is a critical problem in many of our schools; and, while we work at improving the capacity of leadership, we also need to engage our children and help to influence their competency in foundation areas that will help to propel them forward,” said Director of Education Programmes at JN Foundation, Dr Renee Rattray. “Therefore, we welcome the TEACH Caribbean intervention in these schools.”

Mrs McIntosh Robinson noted that a critical part of the programme is also aimed at developing awareness of the Rhodes Scholarship and a pool of potential Rhodes scholars.

“An important part of the TEACH Caribbean programme is about raising the confidence level and expectations of the students, and teachers, so that they can be empowered to believe that they can achieve their full potential,” she said. “A Rhodes scholar is not necessarily a student who went to a traditional high school.”

Teach Caribbean is endorsed by the Ministry of Education and is supported by the Jamaica National Building Society.