EDUCATION MINISTER Andrew Holness has come out ahead of his Cabinet colleagues as the most outstanding performer, scoring B- in a poll conducted recently by pollster Bill Johnson. The next best performer was Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett, who scored C+.

The poll, commissioned by The Gleaner, asked 1,008 respondents to score the performance of selected members of Prime Minister Bruce Golding's Cabinet. Johnson's team asked: "If you were to give a letter grade to the overall job that Bruce Golding and his Cabinet are doing, would you give them an A, B, C, D or F?" They scored the performance of the entire cabinet at C, which was also the average grade for other select members in the Golding administration.

The poll sample had a margin of error of plus or minus three per cent.

average D score

However, respondents used partisan political ink to grade the performances of the ministers. Supporters of the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) graded members of the Golding administration with an average B score, while opposing People's National Party (PNP) supporters gave the Cabinet ministers an average D score.

Pollster Johnson and his team of researches went into the field on May 31 and June 1, traversing 84 communities islandwide and found that most PNP supporters were not impressed by Golding and selected members of his Cabinet. Con-versely, the polls found that most JLP supporters were comfortable with the way the Cabinet had been performing.

Golding's ministers have been given healthy B and B+ scores by JLP supporters.

However, a gulf opens up when supporters of the opposition PNP applied their own grading. Golding's Cabinet received a fat D score for performance, a score which most of his ministers also received.

politically biased assessment

Notwithstanding the politically biased assessment, PNP supporters barely differed with their JLP counterparts in grading Education Minister Andrew Holness and Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett.

Holness received a B+ grade from JLP supporters and a C grade from PNP supporters. Bartlett was graded B by JLP supporters and C- by PNP supporters.

In the final analysis though, non of the ministers received an A, even though JLP supporters graded the cabinet with a B+, a grade they also gave to Holness and Audley Shaw - the Minister of the Finance and the Public Service.

Agriculture Minister Christopher Tufton, and Industry, Investment and Commerce Minister Karl Samuda received D+ scores from PNP supporters, the best scores outside of Holness and Bartlett.