I guess it is logical for the Ministry of Education to proceed to change the format and the strategic objective for assessing students transitioning to the secondary level of the education system. Having completed an intense transformational programme — aimed at achieving ‘improved standards of performance and greater accountability at all levels of the education system’ — this is a natural progression aligned with national goals.

Public outcry of apprehension is, however, cause for deep concern and further analysis. Why would an assessment measured at intervals, based on the normal day-to-day skills and concepts accumulated over time, stoke so much apprehension?

The answer may lie in the education process itself, which is designed to promote an accumulation of concepts and skills and not the assessment product itself. What then will the ‘assessed profile’ reflect? The process or the product?

The foundational capacity of the Primary Exit Profile is learning. What is Learning? And, how do we learn?

Behavioural science accounts of learning starts with the Pavlovian demonstration of the repeated change in the behaviour of his dog in anticipation of the arrival of food.

A theory that has guided school systems from 1889, to this day, giving rise to popular idioms: “Better teaching leads to better learning,” and “Every child can learn and every child must learn”, but have teachers been trained to teach more effectively in order to bring about learning and improved student academic performance on all formats of assessment?

The validity and utility of this theory is under intense scrutiny and challenge, as scientific advancements have eroded its accepted premise and assumption.

The ability of neuroscientists to observe the brain whilst it learns has led to yet another account of how learning takes place in the brain. Spurred by scientific grounding and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, participating countries have reaped significant economic gains and development.

Neuroscience in education, or the science of learning, emerged from collaboration in the medical, psychological and pedagogical communities which now defines and influences educational practices.

How does the brain learn? The brain is a complex organ with specialised areas that control and perform all of our human attributes and functions through a network of billions of neurons and synapses. Neurons form new connections resulting in enhanced capacity and changes in our brain neuroplasticity.

Electrical messages are sent by the neuron through the axon and onto the synapse, or the gap between two neurons, where it releases chemicals into the gap and is received by the dendrites and their branches.

If the dendrites of the receiving neuron have the appropriate chemical receptors a connection will be formed that results in the receiving neuron sending its own electrical message to yet another neuron. This developed neural network will encode and store in memory whatever the message conveyed; be it a skill, concept or emotion. This is learning.

It takes thousands of connecting neurons to encode and record all the properties of the concept that is to be learned in different areas of the brain. Similarly, neural connecting network must also occur in the attentional network and the memory for learning to be retained. Where there is insufficient receptors or weak neurons the brain will prune that information and it will be lost.

If performance is a function of learning then the performance of students in the Caribbean Secondary Examination Certificate examinations in 2015, with respect to the education transformation target to achieve 60 per cent of students passing five subjects or more, including mathematics and English language must be an indicator of something.

Only 25 per cent of the cohort of 40,000 achieved the target, with a whopping 75 per cent either did not achieve or did not sit. This is the profile of the education system at all sectors of our education system with minuscule and random variations. Revelations from the trial assessment of the Primary Exit Profile aligns with this outcome.

As horrific as these statics are, Jamaica’s problem does not lie in the education sector, neither Jamaica’s crime challenges do not lie in the incidents of horrendous criminality occurring daily. The problem is underdeveloped neural mechanisms of the brain.

This is a human capital development prblem, or better yet an underdevelopment problem, reflecting neural mechanisms which cannot support learning, or the absence thereof. These are students and people who cannot think, let alone critically, whose self-regulatory control and sense of right and wrong are not developed. Where the entire executive capacity functions antisocially, shifting the balance for stability and economic developmen, we will never have enough police, hospital beds, or posts for dysfunctional executive functions.

Let me share with you the haunting words of a student:

“Miss, it just not fair, is not like say we no study, but no care how long we study, how hard we study, we just can’t remember what we study.”

This is the inevitability of failure, the epitaph — a failure for which no teacher can be held accountable, a failure that makes any talk of ‘performance pay’ futile, the science will not support it. This is a crisis of extreme and potentially exploding proportions.

We must move quickly to revolutionise the pedagogy with the science of learning that develops and constructs neural mechanisms for learning, for behaviour, for attention, and for emotions. That is when we can seriously think of economic developments and social order.

The Primary Exit Profile is 12 years too early and is attempting to test mechanism not developed. The National Standards Curriculum is insufficient to optimise human potential. Put it another way, our education system is 12 years behind the targets of its own assessment.

The Primary Exit Profile is predicated on an outdated theory, and is merely a profile of our assumptive expectations and good intentions. Are we there yet?

Yvette Reid is a retired educator and director of the Van Horne Foundation. Send comments to the Observer or vanhornefoundation@gmail.com.