Dear Editor,

In places like Jamaica rankings and the analysis of trends do not seem to matter much; this is usually the forte of richer countries. However, data collection is crucial because without sufficient data policymakers won’t be able to plan properly.

This is why the think tank EducateJamaica that specialises in the performance of schools is so important. But, notwithstanding its efforts, the employees of this group are not doing a good job at refining the data so that we may get appropriate information.

EducateJamaica ranks schools based on the percentage of their passes and not the quality. In theory this sounds good. But when truly applied to Jamaica, where the disparities among schools are large, it does not make sense.

For example, if School A has 100 students sitting Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) rxams and all students pass five subjects, but with grade mostly threes. This school, according to EducateJamaica, is doing better than School B that got 99 per cent pass rate with mostly grade ones.

The issue with this methodology is that it does indicate the true performance of our education system, because one may think some schools are doing well when such institutions are actually mediocre. Therefore, one may not be able to identify the institutions that actually require support. Hence we should not be surprised when a school has a pass rate of over 90 per cent for CSEC and for Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE), the institution is not even in the top 20. Unlike the CSEC rankings, the CAPE rankings only measure the quality of the passes; therefore if the students were not getting quality grades at the former level it is unlikely that they will do well at the latter level. Further some schools could also have a problem ensuring that the students have a successful transition to CAPE. In addition, it is also quite odd that a school will not be in the top 20 for the CSEC rankings, yet it is in the top 10 for CAPE. Such examples may mean that some schools have very small sixth form cohorts. So if a school has less than t20 students in sixth form, it is not hard to imagine that a good number of these students could be passing two or more subjects with grades 1-3, which are seen as quality grades at the CAPE level.

It would be appropriate for the Ministry of Education to publish exam data online, as present data analysts have not been able to include all the variables.

Lipton Matthews

lo_matthews@yahoo.com