The late Dr Neville Gallimore was a physician, Member of Parliament, and minister of Government in several portfolios. I wish to pay tribute to him for his stewardship as minister of education.

My wife, family, and I convey sincere condolence to his wife Dr Angela Gallimore, one of Jamaica’s outstanding reading specialists, and their children.

Dr Gallimore became minister of education during the International Monetary Fund (IMF) years of the second half of the 1980s when there had been retrenchment in public education and a prolonged teachers’ salary dispute with the Government. The relationship between the Government and the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) was, to say the least, rocky. Dr Gallimore announced that he wanted his first act as minister of education to be a meeting with the president of JTA to restore peace in education. I had become president of the JTA about two months earlier. The leadership of the association was sceptical. Would this occasion be just a photo op?

At the same time, an offer of peace could not be spurned. The decision was that I should attend, but alone, to test the sincerity of the announcement.

While knowing of Dr Gallimore, I met him personally for the first time at the Ministry of Education, as he had requested. After exchange of pleasantries, flashing cameras of photographers, videotape for television, and cautious answers to questions from journalists by both of us, I asked the minister for a one-on-one meeting which he granted. Having gone armed with a list of the major concerns of JTA we had a cordial, frank, and blunt conversation.

We agreed that the salary negotiations were outside of his remit as minister of education. We also agreed that the other concerns would be addressed and the general process by which the ministry and the JTA would work together to implement them. None could be achieved immediately, but an immediate start had to be made. The meeting lasted less than 45 minutes.

Dr Neville Gallimore proved to be a man of his word. Lasting evidence is that over 30 years later:

• Eight small primary/all-age schools located in remote rural areas in St Mary, St Elizabeth, Hanover, Clarendon, and St Catherine, located at least four miles away from the nearest other school, still provide schooling to the children of their communities.

• Moneague Teachers’ College was reopened and has become a multidisciplinary college serving the parishes of St Mary, St Ann and Trelawny.

• A disruptive period in the administration of Ferncourt High School ended, which allowed the school to settle down and continue its steady path of progress.

There was one unplanned outcome that was born out of the collaboration that followed. The JTA became aware that the Ministry of Education had been severely affected by cutbacks in the public sector. Stretched to the limit with keeping the education system going, top officers hardly had time to think. The association was rich with competent, thinking members dealing daily with constraints of and illogic in the school system. Collectively the association contemplated how some of these aspects of the education system could be addressed.

Knowing that the ministry would automatically suspect the JTA for self-interest and would check proposals thoroughly to detect such, we decided to make policy proposals that were sound, presented professionally in writing, and based patently on the interest of the country and its students. One such idea was the creation of a single high school system by inclusion of new secondary schools through the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) as the method of admission, and Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) as the exit standard.

After probing discussions, with the full understanding that this could not be achieved overnight and that secondary school sports competitions would be the first beneficiaries of improved standards and increased social cohesion through integration, Dr Gallimore embraced this proposal. He decided to start small with the conversion of six new secondary schools into high schools.

A little more than 30 years later the public secondary school system is integrated. High schools, formerly new secondary, from different parts of the country have and continue to be recognised for excellent performance in domains that historically were confined to a few. Academically, some former new secondary schools have large sixth forms, whose students perform creditably in CXC Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE).

Others without sixth forms produce students whose performances in CSEC overlap traditional high schools. The future will even be better as those schools still not yet up to the mark cast off garments of social stigma, remain determined to strive to discover the full potential of human endowment in different areas of intelligence, and reap the rewards of persistent defiance of the status quo.

Dr Neville Gallimore must be remembered and recognised for creating this additional channel in education through which, out of many, we become one people.

Professor Errol Miller is an educator extraodinaire who also served as permanent secretary in the Ministry of Education. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or errol.miller@uwimona.edu.jm.