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Poverty to Prosperity
Budget Presentation
Gordon House March 19, 2015
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special set of policies and legislation called the School Improvement Act, to define in
law, the procedures, powers, roles and responsibilities of critical stakeholders in
school improvement. It would set critical benchmarks and trigger automatic
intervention, to avoid entrenchment of failure, and systems breakdown in schools.
7.
Mr. Speaker, improving the performance of our schools is a critical step in removing
GSAT as a placement mechanism
.
We want to
see the day when Jamaican children
all have equal access to the
highest quality education regardless of their address or socio-economic
background.
We want to see a Jamaica where every school performs to a high
standard,
which makes the parent choice not so much about quality but more so
about proximity and special programme offering.
We want to see a Jamaica in which a parent can close their eye and send their
child to any school and know that child will be literate, numerate, articulate,
cultured, safe, and of critical thought. The type of education system that we now
have, is a kind of Darwanian survival of the brightest.
Yes, it is a meritocracy, the brightest children, through GSAT, get access to
the best schools, which invariably have the best teachers. Bright children from
poor households do get a chance to access preferred places. However, the
correlation between household income and GSAT performance is very high.