In his classic 1989 book, Up the Down Escalator: Development and the International Economy, A Jamaican Case Study, former Prime Minister Michael Manley writes about the predicament of Third World economies in the Global South, whose chokehold of an exploitative imperialist system makes it difficult for progress.

The book outlines careful solutions to eliminate economic inequities faced by millions of people living within these developing economies with the hope that it will lead to long-term prosperity.

This manifesto of sorts was his vision for fixing systemic economic gaps.

Manley’s mission was always to bring the Third World into First World status. Or, as I often say, move the working class to the middle and the middle to be capital owners.

Undoubtedly, the best way to improve the workforce in the 21st century is to invest in early childhood education to ensure that even the most disadvantaged children can succeed alongside their more advantaged peers (James Heckman, Nobel laureate in economics).

This approach is valid for every country and every generation.

Prime Minister Michael Manley announced the policy of free education on May 1, 1973 as a bold attempt at addressing the imbalance of access to education by most Jamaicans. He tried to align the minds of the nation that equity demanded that every child or adult, regardless of their social or financial status, deserved to be educated.

At that time, there were shortages across the board of teachers, schools, and remedial educational opportunities.

What Manley did significantly impacted the country as free education uplifted the lives of thousands of individuals and their families.

Regrettably, 50 years later, an objective comparative analysis of our educational standards for our students shows that we have failed our people and obliterated Michael Manley’s intentions. Today, Jamaican students rank below average in academic performance globally, as highlighted by the Programme for International Student Assessment in a study conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to assess the knowledge and skills of 15-year-old students internationally in mathematics, reading, and science.

Jamaica, a first-time participant in the 2022 triennial global education standards study, had a sample of 3,800 eligible students from 147 secondary schools sitting the assessments. Jamaica scored 397, or 60th place in the 2022 exam, and ended up in 10 of the lowest-ranked countries, including Cambodia, which has the lowest average score of 337, and Palestine, which has the highest of the group, with 361.

The top five countries included Singapore, Macau, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea — all with an average score in the mid to low 500s.

Interestingly, the study stressed that Jamaica’s students were not at a disadvantage as students from other equally low-income economies, with students from similar socio-economic backgrounds, such as Vietnam and Turkey, who scored higher.

Jamaica also falls far behind its peers in the Caribbean, coming in last place to Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba.

The world we live in today is no longer divided by geographical boundaries or trade preferential agreements, but is rather globalised, wherein we are all competing across technologies in real time.

Given this reality, as Jamaicans we can’t be satisfied with where we fall globally and regionally and how our children perform educationally. Yet the Ministry of Education and Youth continues to tout its school improvements year after year.

Although we welcome any improvements in our systems, we must also acknowledge that these are only incremental achievements that have our children ill-prepared for the pace and direction of a world without borders.

The rest of the world does not owe Jamaicans a better standard of living. We have to earn it for ourselves. We will have no chance of attaining it with a substandard education.

The UNESCO declaration states that: “Children do not only have the right to be in school, but also to learn while being there, and to emerge with the skills they need to find secure, well-paid work.”

The recent Reform of Education in Jamaica 2021 report by Professor Orlando Patterson provides more detailed data on how dire the situation is in our schools, pointing to the fact that: “Although the great majority of its children have access to primary and secondary schooling, Jamaica has a severe learning crisis, in that a majority of students at the end of primary school remain illiterate and innumerate and most leave secondary school with no marketable skills.”

Furthermore, “[T]he recently introduced PEP (Primary Exit Profile) exam, which shifted away from memorised learning to the testing of analytic thinking, revealed major deficiencies in the level of learning achieved by students: Only 41 per cent passed in mathematics, 49 per cent in science, and 55 per cent in language arts. A breakdown of the language arts results indicated that a third of students at the end of primary school could not read, 56 per cent could not write, and 57 per cent could not identify information in a simple sentence.”

The PEP exam indicated that most students were barely literate. The mean language score in the last Grade Six Achievement Tests (GSAT) exams in 2018 was 65. While the two exams are not strictly comparable, the GSAT score indicated at least acceptable literacy levels. However, the PEP exam showed that 33 per cent of students could not read or barely do so, 56 per cent could not write or were scarcely able to, and 58 per cent could not find information on a topic in a simple passage.

Performance at the end of secondary schooling was not much better. In 2019, some 32,617 students took the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) exams (54 per cent females/45 per cent males), of which only 42.5 per cent passed five or more subjects, including English and/or mathematics. Overall, only 28 per cent passed five or more subjects with English and mathematics. In the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE) pass rates are low and have been declining — only 45 per cent passed the diploma certificate at an acceptable level.

Yes, the data shows a bleak situation.

As we seek solutions, one thing is clear: We don’t need another report. The work done by Dr Ralph Thompson and the Orlando Patterson team puts everything in its proper perspective. Thompson said in May 2012: “Education is a chain of learning made up of early childhood schools, primary schools, secondary schools, and tertiary institutions. But a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and over time, early childhood has been so neglected that the rest of the chain is now compromised and in danger of collapse.”

Some may argue that the chain is broken. I am not one of those people. I believe we have the opportunity to give our children the quality education they deserve that will provide them with the most competitive chances in the future.

Next week I will share solutions.