Dear Editor,

Education Minister Dr Dana Morris Dixon, who attended Campion College, which is Catholic-affiliated, recently highlighted the importance of the Church in the education of our children and stated that the best-performing schools are faith-based.

Indubitably, the Church has had a vital role in the educational development of our country and its people. Several denominations, such as the Anglican, Baptist, Church of God in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, Methodist, Roman Catholic, and Seventh-day Adventist have built numerous institutions and have contributed significantly to nation-building. What would have happened if we did not have their support?

I agree with Dr Morris Dixon that the Church plays a vital role in character and spiritual development. Having attended a Methodist high school, I benefited from many moral lessons from the sermons shared by the chaplain, even though as a teenager I thought the devotions were too long and boring at times. Nonetheless, he shared many valuable lessons on a Monday morning to start the week.

Notwithstanding, it is a known fact that there are some church-led schools that do not perform well academically and discipline among students leave much to be desired. Let us compare Holy Trinity High School with Campion College, both of which are Catholic schools. Denomination is one of the few things these two schools have in common as both are at opposite ends of the rating scale, with Trinity being among the lowest-performing schools and Campion ranking first or second yearly in terms of the number and quality of passes in the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) exams.

The socio-economic and academic backgrounds of the students, for the most part, are also vastly different. Campion gets the crème de la crème of students, who are typically from high-performing preparatory schools, via the Primary Exit Profile (PEP) exams. Parents of these students are generally far more supportive and well-off and they contribute to their children’s holistic development. The school also has a much stronger alumni association that can pump support into the its initiatives.

Holy Trinity gets underperforming PEP students who can barely read. They are among the many children who have been allowed to pass through the education system without attaining the requisite skills to move to the next level, and this is one of the major issues that has been plaguing our education system for decades.

Several of them have learning challenges, but the system has failed them: parents are not invested, limited special educators, absence of literacy and numeracy specialists, lack of educational resources in schools, among myriad other issues. These are years of systemic failures that we have to address from the root.

The Ministry of Education and Youth has an ambitious initiative to increase passes in maths and English at the external secondary level exams. Over 50 schools are part of the pilot programme, which is benefiting from extended learning hours. Hopefully this will yield some meaningful results.

In the meantime, on a national level, we still do not know much about the Orlando Patterson task force report on education, as it has lacked robust discussion. It would be useful for different stakeholders to have an intimate understanding of the findings and the directions of the ministry so that we can make collaborative efforts to achieve the targets to improve the education sector.

Oneil Madden

maddenoniel@yahoo.com