Dear Editor,

Every generation is judged by the legacy it leaves its children. Jamaica must, therefore, ask itself a simple but profound question: Is our system of secondary school placement serving our children, or are our children serving the system?

The Primary Exit Profile (PEP) examination was introduced with the worthy intention of assessing students and facilitating placement in secondary schools. Yet, years later, it is evident that the system has also produced unintended and deeply troubling consequences. For thousands of children, PEP has become a season of fear, sleepless nights, anxiety, and emotional exhaustion. Instead of looking forward to high school with excitement, many approach it with dread.

Parents, teachers, guidance counsellors, and mental health professionals have repeatedly expressed concern about the enormous pressure placed on children who are barely entering adolescence. Reports of students experiencing severe stress, depression, emotional breakdowns, and even suicidal thoughts should disturb every Jamaican. Whether such cases are few or many is beside the point. Even one child pushed to the brink by our education system is one too many.

No society should require 11-year-olds to carry the emotional weight of an examination that appears to determine the course of his/her future. The deeper problem, however, is not simply the examination itself. It is the culture of ranking and competition that surrounds it. We have created a system in which a handful of schools are viewed as “good schools”, while many others are unfairly regarded as second-tier institutions. Consequently, families believe that success depends not merely on receiving a quality education but on gaining entry into a select group of schools.

This is neither equitable nor sustainable. It is time to consider a different path.

Students should progress naturally from primary to secondary school through continuous assessment rather than being ranked primarily by one high-stakes examination. A child’s potential cannot be accurately measured by performance on a single set of tests. Character, creativity, perseverance, leadership, and practical abilities develop over many years and deserve equal recognition.

Equally important, Jamaica should begin moving towards a community-based system of secondary education in which students ordinarily attend the high school closest to where they live. Such a policy would reduce long and costly commutes, strengthen family and community involvement, improve student safety, and allow children to devote more time to homework, extracurricular activities, and rest instead of spending hours travelling each day. More importantly, it would force us to confront an uncomfortable truth.

If parents are desperate to avoid certain schools, the answer is not to intensify competition for the few schools considered desirable. The answer is to improve every school. Every secondary school should receive the resources, leadership, qualified teachers, technology, laboratories, libraries, sporting facilities, and arts programmes necessary to become a school of excellence. The quality of a child’s education should never depend upon the community into which that child was born or on performance in one examination at age 11.

Some critics will argue that neighbourhood-based placement removes parental choice. But genuine choice exists only when every school offers a high standard of education. Until then, what we call “choice” is often little more than competition for scarcity.

This conversation is not about lowering standards, it is about raising standards everywhere. It is not about abandoning excellence, it is about making excellence accessible to every child. It is not about eliminating assessment, it is about ensuring that assessment serves learning rather than dominating childhood.

Education should develop healthy, confident, compassionate, and capable citizens, not anxious children who believe their worth can be reduced to an examination score. The Ministry of Education now has an opportunity to begin a serious national conversation about the future of secondary school placement. Such a discussion should involve educators, parents, psychologists, school leaders, employers, students, churches, universities, and civil society. The objective should not be to defend the current system simply because it has existed for years, but to determine whether a better one is possible.

History teaches us that every great reform begins with one courageous question: Can we do better? For the sake of Jamaica’s children, the answer must be yes.

If we truly believe that every child matters, then every school must matter. And when every school matters, every child has an equal opportunity to succeed.

Dr Burnett Robinson

blpprob@aol.com