Keith Wellington, president of the Inter-secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA), says the tightening of the rules that govern the transfer of students-athletes from overseas to Jamaican schools was done to encourage the development of local talent rather than the use of resources to, as he puts is, “disproportionately invest in foreign talent”.

On Tuesday, ISSA announced far-reaching amendments to their rules of transfer of foreign nationals to Jamaican high school, which are expected to have serious implications for the top schools, especially the contenders for the annual Boys’ and Girls’ Athletics Championships, commonly thought to be the biggest of its kind in the world.

Foreign students with no family ties to Jamaica or whose families are not in the island as part of the diplomatic corps or United Nations convention will have to sit out a year, regardless of their ages, with immediate effect.

Additionally, the transfers will also count as part of the quotas for each sports, for example, three each for football and cricket and two per class in track and field.

While it is not new for foreign nationals to attend high school in Jamaica and compete in various sporting disciplines, there has been an explosion of overseas athletes coming to Jamaica in the last decade or so, primarily from the Caribbean and as far as Africa.

At their annual meeting in June, ISSA moved to plug the holes that allowed the transfer of student-athletes with some clauses, and Wellington told the Jamaica Observer on Tuesday they were “meant as a mechanism to encourage those schools with the resources to invest in the development of local talent rather than using their [and the public’s] resources to disproportionately invest in foreign talent”.

A release from ISSA said, “All students transferring from a secondary institution outside of Jamaica will be subject to a waiting period of one year before becoming eligible to participate in ISSA-organised competition, irrespective of their age.”

This follows the rule change that restricted transfers between local schools in the ISSA system.

Meanwhile, the principals of ISSA Girls Champs winners Edwin Allen High and many-time Boys Champs, Manning Cup football, and Sunlight Cup cricket champions Jamaica College said they welcomed the changes.

Wayne Robinson, the Jamaica College principal, said while he accepted the views of the “majority of the principals” who voted at the meeting, the immediacy of the rules would have some effects on plans that some schools might have.

“Some plans will have to be shelved, and this will have some impact, but we always work within the rules,” Robinson said.

Robinson told the Jamaica Observer, “We are part of the body and the vast majority of the body made the decision, and we will work with the decision of the body.”

Jermaine Harris, the Edwin Allen principal, told the Jamaica Observer he was in full agreement with the amendments.

“I was always an advocate that schools should be a place for learning and if there was a rule for the locals then there should be one for those coming in from overseas as well,” said Harris.

While saying the rule would not affect his school, Harris said there were sufficient local talents for schools to be competitive at Champs.