Aspects of the report, The Reform of Education in Jamaica (2021), led by Professor Orlando Patterson, are alarming, to put it mildly.

From this newspaper’s perspective, the assertion that, “A breakdown of the language arts results indicated that a third of students at the end of primary school could not read, 56 per cent could not write, and 57 per cent could not identify information in a simple sentence” was particularly worrying.

And further, that in Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) exams at the end of the final year of high school, “only 28 per cent passed five or more subjects with English and mathematics”.

Obviously such results reflect huge inadequacies in our education system. To say that there is a great deal we are not doing right is to grossly understate the case.

This newspaper has often highlighted as an example of extreme failure, the shift system which still exists 40-odd years after it was first introduced as a short-term measure to allow every child a high school education.

It is true that inadequate resources have contributed to such continuing embarrassments as the shift system caused by inadequate classroom space, poorly paid teachers and run-down infrastructure. It’s undeniable, for example, that education has suffered greatly down the years as a fallout from stringent economic structural adjustment programmes.

However, it is also true that flawed resource allocation often flows from an absence of political will, with leaders all too often pandering to the desire to win elections rather than the greater public good.

And what does that say for the electorate who fail to discern the greater good such as the need to build out adequate classroom space?

We are drawn down this road by word from the Ministry of Education that more than 20,000 students are now enrolled in the Sixth Form Pathways Programme — hailed by Education Minister Mrs Fayval Williams as unprecedented and historic — facilitating an additional two years of high school. We have no doubt that seven years of high school is better than five, especially since many children only develop a sense of responsibility in their late teens. Nonetheless, there are questions, especially as regards to resource constraints and also in the context of the failing record of those in charge.

As we understand it, students who are more academically inclined and are pursuing Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations are in Pathway I of the sixth form programme. Those in technical and vocational courses are in Pathway II. We are told that Pathway III will facilitate students who do not have passes in CSEC and will be able to re-sit subjects or acquire certificates.

Presumably, Pathway III will also seek to support the even more unfortunate ones who have completed five years of high school but, sadly, remain functionally illiterate.

Like much else in education, limited resources, including inadequate classroom space, are among the challenges facing the Sixth Form Pathways Programme. How are these to be sustainably resolved?

We wonder, will those students who have consistently failed and have lost self-confidence during their first five years of high school receive additional, specialist support, perhaps in a new environment? All this, bearing in mind that those in Pathway III are invariably from the poorest homes with parents and guardians least able to help.

As should be the case for all responsible Jamaicans we aim to pay keen attention.