EDUCATION Transformation Oversight Committee (ETOC) Chair Dr Adrian Stokes says in the “major effort” now underway to reform the operations of public school boards, the application process will be revamped to lift the profile of individuals wishing to serve in this capacity.

“Jamaica’s education system is relatively decentralised, with significant responsibility given to school boards to oversee performance. This means that the method of choosing boards is extremely important. Anecdotally, schools with strong boards tend to perform better than those with dysfunctional boards. With this in mind, a major effort is underway to reform our school boards in Jamaica — two types of reforms are being pursued,” Stokes told a Ministry of Education ETOC press conference at Jamaica House in St Andrew Wednesday.

The ETOC chair said to improve the cadre of individuals seeking to serve on school boards, the application process will be made “very transparent, similar to what obtains in the wider public sector”.

“Soon, individuals who wish to serve on a school board will upload their CVs and other relevant information to a website managed by the ministry. These individuals will be vetted to ensure that they are fit and proper, with the ultimate goal of matching competencies to the specific needs of schools,” Stokes explained.

He said the second critical reform relates to legislative changes.

“Currently, the composition of government-operated school boards can lead to a perverse result where a school can effectively govern itself. This means that members of a school-appointed board can effectively control the board’s decisions. This is an obvious conflict and goes against well-established good governance principles. The goal is to ensure that the rules applicable to government-run schools are similar to those that apply to church-run schools,” Stokes told the briefing.

He also said critical initiatives are on the way for the upcoming school year which starts in September.

“Crucially, training and retraining of teachers and other professionals across the system is being wrapped up. So, for the upcoming school year there is a strong focus on teachers from grades one to three in reading instruction. We are also seeing significant effort to assess students early, to better understand learning challenges, so that appropriate intervention strategies can be implemented,” he said.

Furthermore, the ETOC chair said the “practice of moving students from one grade to the next irrespective of academic development will be stopped”.

“Students who are not at the requisite level will be placed on a pathway to allow them to remediate the learning challenges they are experiencing. Individual learning plans will be developed for these students to ensure proper targeting of learning challenges,” he stated.

Meanwhile, noting that the ministry is facing a serious problem in some high schools with students matriculating from primary schools, via the Primary Exit Profile (PEP) exams who, “are not academically equipped to undertake 10 subjects in grade seven”, he said action will be taken.

“These students, some of them are placed in Pathway Three by the ministry. They require focused attention to correct fundamental issues with literacy and numeracy therefore I am happy that, come this September, students who require academic assistance, as indicated by their Pathway Three grouping, will do only six subjects instead of the multiple subjects they are currently undertaking. These students will be taken through a more targeted programme to ensure they are better equipped to pursue a successful secondary school life,” Stokes told the briefing.

He also said ETOC — while seriously concerned about the last set of passes in math and English at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) level — was encouraged by the PEP performances.

“I am happy to say that from the recent PEP data, we have seen a marked improvement in the quality of students who will enter our secondary school system this September. So the data are clear: Tracking students from grades four to six we can see that only three per cent of students are now rated as “developing” in mathematics at the grade six level — a significant drop from 26 per cent in 2023,” Stokes noted.

“Very encouragingly, 56 per cent of the grade six cohort are now ‘proficient’ in mathematics, compared to only 27 per cent when these children were in grade four. That is very commendable. The results for CSEC math and English will be released in August, and I am very hopeful. We’re expecting to see a lift, year over year, certainly for the math passes in August when the results are released,” he stated.

In the meantime, Stokes said ETOC — which is responsible for driving the implementation of the 365 recommendations of the 2021 Professor Orlando Patterson Jamaica Education Transformation Commission Report — is now at an overall 30 per cent progress rate in terms of implementation of the recommendations to improve education outcomes in Jamaica.

“This is a positive increase from the 23 per cent progress reported at our last quarterly briefing. Work has begun on all pillars, with all initiated endeavours progressing as planned. An additional two initiatives were finalised this reporting period, bringing the total number of finalised initiatives to 17 since the project began,” he said.

Stokes also said work continues on the plan to modernise the Ministry of Education, preparing it to lead a world-class education sector.

“The education sector is relatively large and complex compared to other areas of government. We have identified serious issues relating to weak accountability systems [that will] ensure that individuals within education are held to a world-class standard. The transformation of education in Jamaica cannot truly happen until the ministry overseeing the sector is globally competitive in its administration and policy development,” he added.

The Patterson report recognises seven pillars of transformation within the education sector — governance, legislation, leadership and administration; early childhood education; curriculum teaching and teacher training; the tertiary sector; technical and vocational education and training; infrastructure and technology; and financing.

The transformation of the country’s education system will cost $280 billion over 20 years and some $166 billion in the first seven years of the programme.