The months leading up to the start of each academic year brings with it a buzz of excitement as students, teachers, and other stakeholders anticipate examination results. Perhaps one of the least known and least anticipated results is that of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

The PISA programme was launched in 1997 and was first administered in 2000. PISA is now administered in over 80 countries, including Jamaica. It is a triennial international survey which aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students. The assessment examines the extent to which education systems are preparing students to meet life’s challenges.

In 2022 Jamaica embraced the opportunity to participate in PISA with a sample of eligible students between 15 years and three months and 16 years and two months. It is expected that a report regarding Jamaica’s participation in the programme will be ready by January 2024.

PISA is coordinated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and is administered across skills in reading, mathematics, and science. A new assessment, ‘Learning in the Digital World’, will also measure students’ motivation and regulation while learning digitally. It is important to note that this new area of assessment, focusing on how students engage with digital tools, comes amid a dreary backdrop in education.

At the onset of the novel coronavirus pandemic, when schools were closed and face-to-face instruction ended, numerous concerns arose regarding how much students were actually learning through the various modalities of online instruction. The concept of learning loss is actually designed to describe declines in knowledge test scores emerging from comparative analysis of standardised test results. According to the UN, the pandemic has wiped out 20 years of education gains. Distressingly, the UN adds that an additional 101 million or 9 per cent of children in grades 1 through 8 fell below minimum reading proficiency levels in 2020. Statistics from the UN paints a damming picture: 258 million children and youth still do not attend school; 617 million children and adolescents cannot read and do basic maths; less than 40 per cent of girls in sub-Saharan Africa have completed lower secondary school; and some four million children and youth refugees are out of school.

At the height of the pandemic, the Ministry of Education and Youth reported that approximately 120,000 primary and high school students were not attending classes. The Ministry of Education implemented the ‘Yard-to-Yard, Find the Child Initiative’ in order to find students who are still disengaged. The Minister of Education Fayval Williams has since reported that the attendance of students have returned to pre-pandemic numbers.

The Digital Divide

The ‘digital divide’ is a term that refers to the uneven distribution between demographics and regions that have access to modern information and communications technology and those that don’t or have restricted access. This technology can include the telephone, television, personal computers, and the internet. The overwhelming majority of those students who were disconnected from their education at the height of the pandemic had no internet or poor internet service or had no electronic gadgets to log on.

Digital inequality is more evident between urban and rural areas, where the hilly terrain can cause poor internet connectivity. Many schools, especially in rural areas, have suffered tremendously due to internet connectivity issues.

Recently, the Jamaican Government appointed Dr Dana Morris Dixon minister without portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister. Dr Dixon has direct oversight for skills and digital transformation. During the State of the Nation Debate, Dr Dixon told the senate that the ongoing roll-out of the broadband initiative is at the heart of the digital transformation in Jamaica. The senator added that the Government’s push is to ensure that everyone has access to the most basic tool, the internet.

Since then, the Government has launched the Learning and Investment for Transformation (Lift) programme. The programme will provide youth with long-term opportunities for employment and social integration. Under the Lift programme, some 2,500 youth will have access to professional training and job placement over a five-year period. It is estimated that a total of 500 young people with financial needs and aged 17 years and older are to be targeted each year for five years.

To apply for the Lift programme, individuals must have two character references and three Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) subjects, which must include mathematics and English language. This is problematic in at least two ways. In the first instance, how many of our students pass both mathematics and English language at the CSEC level? Secondly, given that some students do not sit the CSEC examinations but might have done and have passes in both mathematics and English language in City and Guilds, why exclude those students? This again speaks to the inequalities within the education system, many of which have been exacerbated since the pandemic. Perhaps this stipulation can be revisited to see how best we can give all students access to the Lift programme.

The Education Commission and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in their Recovering Learning report stated that only about one in four of the world’s young people are on track to learn the skills they need to get a job either through education, employment, or training. The report further states that with high rates of out-of-school young people and low attainment of secondary-level skills, countries across the globe are facing a skills crisis, with the majority of youth unprepared to take part in today’s workforce.

The report asserts that deep disparities across countries and among those from the poorest communities are increasing inequalities. In at least one in three low-income countries with available data, more than 85 per cent of young people are off track in secondary-level, digital, and job-specific skills attainment. The 2019 Global Competitiveness Report ranks Jamaica 93rd out of 141 on digital skills among the country’s active labour market.

The Lift, therefore, is rather timely. However, the policy crafters and implementers should ensure that no barriers are in place that can lead to frustration or exclusion of potential candidates. Clearly there needs to be a greater role for technical and vocational education and training (TVET) to address youth unemployment in our society, but we need to dispel the biases towards TVET.

Nevertheless, given the manner in which many of our schools are structured, the education system is not conducive to exposing our students sufficiently to transferable skills, including socio-emotional and digital skills that will allow them to make an easy transition to the workforce.

As we move towards The Fourth Industrial Revolution, it is important that society implements a more robust and inclusive system that embraces digital safety in order to cater to the needs of the 21st century learner.

In the words of Friedrich Huebler, head of UNESCO, “At a time when the world of education and work is undergoing fundamental changes, we must reimagine our education systems and position the learner at the core of the transformation process.”

Wayne Campbell is an educator and social commentator with an interest in development policies as they affect culture and or gender issues. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or waykam@yahoo.com.