June South-Robinson, Contributor

Is the current education debate going to end in the near future, or will we be arguing the same issues in 2010?

We are a talented, innovative, resourceful, resilient people who have made our mark on the world's stage in many arenas. We cannot allow ourselves to be ascribed the label 'a nation of dunces' by anyone, including our own. We cannot afford to waste any more of our children's time.

Today would be a good day to start if we are willing to ascribe to the 'K.I.S.S.' theory.

If we, as a society, are really concerned about the low - and dropping - levels of achievement in English and math, we should be focusing our efforts in the classroom on improving literacy, numeracy and critical-thinking skills. Why does everything have to be so complicated, burdened with red tape and bureaucrats - who seem more interested in safeguarding their cushy jobs and pushing papers around, than dealing with the issue of our 'failing' children?

Islandwide programme

The simple part, implement an islandwide programme - beginning in January 2009 (giving time for training of those critical to the programme, familiarisation and implementation) - that focuses on improving literacy and numeracy skills within a finite period. The private sector has a vested interest, as it is these students who will, hopefully, form a part of its labour force in the future. Ask for their input - both in cash or kind. Ask companies to adopt a school and to provide and maintain a library for each classroom, pay for the baseline testing and reporting - required to identify each child's needs. Ask them to invite school principals to their management-training workshops

Jamaica has enough local, qualified 'experts' to create a literacy/numeracy programme, which probably exists already and is sitting, forgotten, in File 13 of a Ministry of Education office. We have enough education officers to monitor its implementation, monitoring, assessment and reporting.

Study the model of the UK Literacy Hour. Every child from kindergarten through year six, in every school in England and Wales, had an hour, daily, devoted solely to the improvement of literacy skills, which also involved including cross-curricular themes and topics, and differentiated learning. It was very prescriptive (which certainly helped weak or inexperienced teachers) but everyone got on-board and worked with the programme. Baseline testing and tracking were also vital components.

It has worked, to some degree, providing for the students in the system from kindergarten to grade 11. The US also has had successes with equally innovative interventions.

The hard parts involved

(a) Securing the funding and ensuring that it is spent on our students, not on hiring consultants, training semi-literate teachers and maintaining substandard principals who either have no training, interest in their pupils, no knowledge of institutional management or in leading an informed school-improvement programme.

(b) We need to do a reality check. Do we want to continue to support the continued employment and engagement of 'substandard educators' who must be held as equally accountable as the students and their parents for the success of the school system? Are we going to set realistic, achievable standards and give our educators a finite time within which to meet them or leave the system?

Will our students continue to be taught by teachers who are unable to construct a sentence? (Just listen to some of the recent interviews on TV news with 'educators', teachers and principals alike, who seem not to know that rules of grammar exist, particularly subject-verb agreement, or that the letter 'H' exists at the start of 'homework' and 'history' - but not at the start of 'ignorance'!)

Will Jamaica ever require all school principals and boards to be accountable for leadership in adding value to what the pupils gain academically, vocationally and socially from attending the institution? When will all principals be required to have recognised postgraduate education-management qualifications?

Greatest hurdle

(c) Committing to seeing the programme through. Too many initiatives start and fizzle out with changes of government. Could we, as a nation, commit to our young, and leave their future out of politics?

(d) Finally, what of the pupils' and parents' roles in the outcomes of the curricula studied and the examination results? This is the greatest hurdle of all - engaging the students and their parents, getting them to buy into being proactive members of this whole effort, making them accountable for their own success. This really is the crux of our dilemma. If we cannot convince them that we need their input, then we may well be debating our education challenges into 2050!!!!!!!

What's the K.I.S.S. theory? (Keeping it Simple, Stupid). It requires lateral thinking and guts from those who decide to take on the challenge of our nation's future. It also requires immediate action - not more hot air, committees, studies, or czars - all stakeholders playing a part.

"All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts, ..." William Shakespeare

So, do we start today?

June South-Robinson, junemarie1958@hotmail.com, Via Go-Jamaica