THE Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) is confident it can reduce breaches of its eligibility rules through education and improvements to its monitoring systems.

ISSA President Keith Wellington says the association is strengthening its registration system after moving away from an external contractor, while placing greater emphasis on schools to properly verify the eligibility of their students.

Wellington told the Jamaica Observer on Wednesday that although three cases of alleged eligibility breaches in the ISSA Manning Cup football competition have attracted widespread publicity this season, there have been other cases that were dealt with through the association’s normal channels.

The three cases that became public have resulted in sanctions against Jamaica College and Excelsior High School.

Wellington said eligibility breaches, whether deliberate or accidental, were not new to the association and were more common in its most popular competitions, football and track and field.

“Traditionally, most of the eligibility breaches occur in our most high-stakes competitions of SBF (schoolboy football) and Champs (Inter-Secondary Schools Boys’ and Girls’ Championships),” he said.

He said that the association expected improvements in its monitoring systems to result in fewer breaches.

“ISSA is confident that over time their will be significant reductions in breaches of our eligibility rules as we strengthen our monitoring systems and rely less on final verification at the school level.”

Wellington said that eligibility breaches were not limited to transfers, but could involve other requirements, including school attendance and academic performance.

He said member schools had a responsibility to ensure that their students complied with the rules, with principals ultimately accountable for their schools’ entries.

WELLINGTON… each member school has the responsibility to ensure that they abide by the established rules, with each principal being the chief accountable officer where compliance with ISSA rules are concerned.

“The rules of ISSA and the enforcement thereof are established and enforced by the member schools that form the organisation and competes against each other,” Wellington said.

“Each member school has the responsibility to ensure that they abide by the established rules, with each principal being the chief accountable officer where compliance with ISSA rules are concerned.

“Validation of eligibility for each competition begins with each principal verifying and validating a student’s eligibility. It is therefore incumbent on all schools to be familiar with all established rules.”

Wellington also defended the work of ISSA’s administrative staff, saying their role was primarily to examine documents submitted and verified by school principals.

“The role of ISSA’S administrative staff is largely to verify documents verified, validated and submitted by principals. Where breaches are identified by the ISSA staff or other competing schools, the rules and regulations are applied,” he said.

The association previously relied on an external contractor to manage the registration of athletes for its various competitions but has been developing its own system in recent years.

Wellington said the change had improved accountability and made it easier to track students and identify breaches, including those that may have occurred in previous years.

“Over the last few years, ISSA has been automating it’s registration system which has allowed for greater accountability as well as easier tracking of students regards. By extension this has made it easier to identify and confirm breaches even of a historical nature,” he said.

He acknowledged, however, that the system was still being developed and that the transition from the contractor’s database had exposed gaps in the association’s records.

“However, as we continue to build out our platform, we have also been able find gaps in our data that may result in previously unidentified registration breaches coming to the fore,” he said. “Most, if not all of these gaps have resulted from our conversion from a contractor provided database to our own in-house database.”