Although there is hesitancy within education circles about the Sixth Form Pathway Programme and whether or not it is relevant in today’s Jamaica, Minister of Education and Youth Fayval Williams continues to embrace it with glee.

She maintains that the seven-year high school programme can be a win-win for the island’s students as they prepare for education at the tertiary level, and for the world of work.

Now, a majority of the students who sit examinations at grade 11, or fifth form, do not go on to sixth form, choosing instead to start working, attend colleges that do not require CAPE entry requirements, or fall by the wayside.

“I want to highlight our Sixth form Pathways Programme,” Williams stated in a recent interview with the Jamaica Observer. “I know that when it was re-launched there were some resistance to it, but the thinking there is if you go back and look at the reports of decades passed, they would’ve recommended that schools go up to grade 13.

“Additionally the Education Act, if you read it, says education should be compulsory till age 19 and in the pandemic as well, just think, the students who graduate in grade 11 last year they would’ve missed a year and a half of school. So even for that we needed to have these programmes to help them catch up. But beyond that, our students need to be certified when they leave school and going into the work world.

“We think there is a big difference between a 16-year-old and an 18-year-old in terms of their maturity and during those two years we will be using them to give our students skills so that they are more attractive to employers when they enter the world of work. During that time they could also re-sit some of their CSEC exams, they could get to a level where they can make the decision about tertiary education,” the minister said.

The focus on insisting on the additional two years of study at high school, Williams said, is to strengthen the pool of those who seek tertiary studies.

“Ideally, we want to be expanding the number of children pursuing tertiary education,” Williams continued. “The numbers show that barely a third of those who graduate high schools go on to tertiary and if we really want our economy to grow, if we want our per capita GDP to move from where it is, it’s hovering between five to six thousand US dollars, we want that to get into the US$35,000 and US$50,000 range – we have to get a higher percentage of our population with tertiary education.

But what about children who cannot manage the academic work at that level?

“There are different pathways,” she responded. “We recognise that not all students want to do the heavy duty academic work and so we’ve mainstreamed technical and vocational educational training; we don’t want Jamaicans to continue to think about TVET as second class, it isn’t…we’re mainstreaming TVET as part of our Sixth form Pathways programme,” she continued.

According to Williams, no firm decision has been taken as yet about whether or not the programme should be mandatory, although initially, she said, that was part of the thought process.

“We had said initially that we’d love for it to be mandatory, but we’re in the beginning. Let us start and encourage the acceptance of it and in time I believe that Jamaican parents will come to see the benefit of it and that it will become a natural progression. Those two years are crucial years with opportunities in several areas,” the minister maintained.

Adding to that process is the much touted Yard to Yard Initiative, which, coming out of an environment whereby children were, for the most part, subjected to learning from online platforms, will be ‘roped in’ again to resume face-to-face deliberations in the classroom, which would, naturally, complement the Sixth Form Pathway Programme.

“As we’re coming back into the face-to-face environment it will be easier for us to know who is back and who is not, and so we’ve put together a programme that’s already started where we’re using some of our HOPE students and our guidance counsellors and social workers to help us go out into communities to knock on gates or doors. Of course we would’ve identified the children prior to that, because the school knows who is enrolled.

“We go out and talk to the parents and find out what’s happening, what are the limiting factors, why is your child not in school…We need to know these things so we can intervene to help. We have to take the initiative to show we care.

“Additionally, when we go out into the homes we’ll be collecting the information using an app, the live information we can aggregate, so we can see whether it is that 2000 families need to be on PATH etc.

“To help with the learning recovery, is also our plan. To have the National Home Work and National Extra Lesson, we’re getting ready to launch that beginning this term. It will be primarily online and face-to-face, where it is possible, in some areas,” the minister ended.