Jamaica is still a long way from achieving the Ministry of Education’s target of 85 per cent proficiency in all subject areas for children entering high school.

Nonetheless, we are heartened by Education Minister Senator Dr Dana Morris Dixon’s optimism that good progress is being made following outcomes of the 2025 high school entrance placement instrument, Primary Exit Profile (PEP).

As explained by Dr Morris Dixon, the bulk of the 33,462 students, mostly 11/12-year-olds, who sat the exams were in Grade One at primary and prep schools when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, turning lives upside down for two years at least.

Children were kept out of school to facilitate health safety protocols and online learning became the new buzz phrase.

But for those children from the most impoverished homes, appropriate electronic devices were often not available, nor was there Internet access in many cases.

And, even with those facilities, many children and their teachers found remote teaching and learning extremely challenging, to put it very mildly.

Hence an upbeat Senator Morris Dixon says: “When you look at the results you are even happier because you know what these children would have been through…”

Of course, as has been the case in the Jamaican education system for decades, the real elephant in the room is the reality that far too many children will be entering high school reading way below their grade level.

Sadly, in some high schools there will be those among the new entrants who are functionally illiterate. That reality means responsible high school leadership has no option but to seek to organise remedial reading sessions.

That, in a context of extreme personnel and resource limitations, and with few, if any of those high school teachers trained in that specialised area.

To be fair to the minister, she has openly discussed this matter of illiterates in high schools since taking charge of the education ministry in October last year.

In fact, she has pledged to have reading as a timetabled subject area in the primary school curriculum.

Her rationale, as expressed back in May, was: “[I]n my mind, what is the point of having a heavy curriculum and heavy material to go through [in high school] and you are not literate. At a minimum, every child should leave primary school literate…”

At the risk of being unfair to Senator Morris Dixon’s predecessors, we believe persistent post-primary semi-literacy and illiteracy is the result of leaders simply kicking the can down the road rather than proactively dealing with it.

Whether the current minister or someone else is in charge of education following the soon-coming general parliamentary election, this challenge must be a priority going forward.

Also of vital importance to Jamaica’s education programme is a comprehensive, safe and affordable transportation system for schoolchildren in rural areas. That’s a project which school leaders, parents, and their political representatives have pleaded for down the years.

To the credit of Transport Minister Mr Daryl Vaz, he has never flinched from advocating its absolute necessity. He is now pushing to make it reality.

Let’s not be fooled, a comprehensive rural school bus system in Jamaica will be extremely expensive and very challenging. Yet, it is a project that can wait no longer.