PORTLAND, Jamaica – Opposition Spokesperson on Education, Damion Crawford says a People’s National Party (PNP) administration would introduce education intervention programmes, if elected, to improve the performance of students across the nation.

Jamaican students performed poorly in last year’s Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) and Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) exams. The island recorded a decline in CSEC passes when compared to 2022, which was used as the base year, given that there had been exam breaches in 2023.

Crawford said early intervention is key to addressing the challenges being faced by students.

“One of the problems we have is that you wait until the end of the year, you test the child, you do no fixing of the problem, and send that child to another grade,” Crawford said.

“And it leads to what we have now, 18 per cent of our children getting five subjects, including math and English,” he continued, adding “And so we are going to implement an intervention system that therefore corrects the failing at seventh grade, at week one, at week two, week three, instead of wait until the end of the year.”

Evening classes facilitated by trained teachers and weekend classes were some of the programmes cited by the Opposition spokesperson who made the remarks at a PNP party meeting in Portland Eastern on Sunday.

The PNP representative for Portland Eastern is attorney Isat Buchanan, who will face-off with the Jamaica Labour Party incumbent Ann-Marie Vaz for the seat in the upcoming general election.

Crawford, who had contested for the seat against Vaz in a by-election in 2019, will be the PNP standard bearer in St Catherine North West at the next polls.