THE National Council on Education (NCE) says it has developed a new evaluation programme for school boards as it moves to help those that are battling with governance issues.

According to Merris Murray, the NCE’s executive director, the decision has its foundation in the 2015 National Education Inspectorate (NEI) report which revealed that some schools had management problems.

Murray explained that the programme, which will eventually be available to all schools, is necessary to improve the current reality of many schools that have recorded shortcomings.

“We are aware of the concerns of board chairs, especially in schools that are failing, and that is why we have established a review board. However, at this point it only deals with unresolved government matters, and that is separate and apart from the work that is done by the NEI. But we recognise that we need to go a step further,” Murray told journalists at this week’s

Jamaica Observer Monday Exchange.

“We are working to introduce a new programme wherein we have just developed a proposal to develop a rubric, a mechanism to evaluate the roles of the boards… so that we can offer support to these boards,” Murray said.

“This we hope to achieve in partnership with the NEI, whom we have already engaged to see how we can work together to offer the best service possible,” Murray added.

She said that the programme, which should be rolled out within another two months, is currently undergoing a financial evaluation as the council aims to implement the project in a way that will allow for effective execution of the rubric.

Murray said that it is expected to go a step further than the NEI inspectors and feature not only an evaluation and recommendations but will accommodate monitoring and guidance for school boards as the council seeks to understand the underlying challenges impacting the poor performance of some boards.

“There may be a deficit in terms of the governance, and that is established, but we need to drill down, to find out what it is that the boards did not do, to look at the issues that they deliberated on and the accompanying recommendations, to take a look at their focus, to measure whether they did a micro analysis of the situation or they just looked at peripherals, to look at how involved they are in the school improvement plan as well as how effective they are at providing support to the principal, for example,” Murray said.

She said this will allow the council to better understand the challenges being encountered by the boards, in order to make better recommendations. The findings of the evaluations are also expected to contribute greatly to the renewal or discontinuance of board memberships.

Under the new policy, board chairmen should only be allowed to occupy the office for three consecutive terms (nine years) except in special circumstances. But Murray explained that this may differ in schools operated by churches, since they use their own guidelines.