Harrison: Jamaica must stop normalising failure in education

Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) President La Sonja Harrison is warning that Jamaica is facing an education emergency and is calling for urgent national action to address widening learning gaps.

Speaking at a Rotary Club of Kingston luncheon last Thursday, Harrison called for the development of a national foundational learning emergency plan to tackle persistent weaknesses in literacy and numeracy.

“Jamaica has an education emergency, but we have not yet named it,” she said, pointing to the thousands of students who continue to struggle with literacy and numeracy, compounded by learning losses that have yet to be fully recovered.

She said what is needed is “not another programme or project to treat with the illiteracy problem. Not another intervention to treat with learning gap, as this is just not another education challenge.

“It is an emergency because when children are progressing through our schools without mastering reading, comprehension, writing and numeracy, we’re not simply dealing with an academic problem. We’re compromising Jamaica’s future,” she said.

The JTA president noted that recently, Jamaica has experienced repeated disruptions to education, including the COVID-19 pandemic, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, fires, infrastructure failures, and teacher shortages.

However, while significant attention has been placed on repairing school buildings and restoring operations following disasters, Harrison said less effort has been devoted to recovering lost learning.

“We have spent considerable time recovering buildings, ... but we have not given the same national urgency to recovering learning,” Harrison said.

Beyond that, she said Jamaica needs an educational framework “crafted by Jamaican educators for Jamaican children, underpinned by Judeo-Christian principles, adequately and sustainably resourced to produce authentic Jamaican citizenry who are globally adept”.

The plan, she said, must be a multi-year national initiative rather than another short-term government programme or donor-funded project.

“Jamaican people must be able to hold both sides of the Parliament to [account] for the plan, so that they can shift neither to the left nor to the right. They must stay the course for the 10 years that we say we’re going to work on the plan,” she said.

She said the plan must be properly funded, with both sides of Parliament agreeing on a method of financing.

URGENT INTERVENTION

Harrison noted that there has been some discussion about using funds from the National Housing Trust, while adding that the entity’s resources have already been used for several other purposes.

She pointed to Jamaica’s performance in international assessments as further evidence of the need for urgent intervention.

Harrison noted that Jamaican students recorded an average mathematics score of 377 in the 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), compared with an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average of 472.

She also said only about half of Jamaican 15-year-olds reached the baseline reading proficiency benchmark, compared with almost three-quarters of students across OECD countries.

The latest Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate examination results, she argued, also warrant closer scrutiny.

English A (language) recorded an 83.6 per cent pass rate in 2026, down from 85 per cent in 2025, while mathematics improved to 48.7 per cent from 44 per cent.

However, Harrison said the percentages alone do not tell the full story.

She questioned the size of the cohort that sat the examinations and how many students who entered grade seven five years earlier actually progressed to sit the examinations.

“These are some hard conversations we need to have as a nation,” she said.

Harrison expressed particular concern about the performance of boys.

She cited data showing that 59 per cent of Jamaican boys performed below Level Two in reading in the PISA, compared with 43 per cent of girls.

“We cannot normalise that,” she said. “We cannot become comfortable with failure simply because it has become familiar.”

ADDRESS GENDER GAP

Harrison said the country must also find ways to address the persistent gender gap and prevent young men from being left behind by the education system.

She also questioned the disparity between Jamaica’s traditional and non-traditional high schools.

Of the country’s 171 high schools, only 35 are traditional high schools, she noted.

Harrison questioned the prospects for students who do not gain places at traditional high schools and called for greater focus on ensuring that every child has access to quality education, regardless of the school they attend.

Harrison also stressed that greater focus must be placed on early childhood education, arguing that the sector requires urgent attention.

Jamaica has more than 2,400 early childhood institutions, she noted, while calling for more trained teachers and lower teacher-to-pupil ratios.

She compared Jamaica’s approach with Finland, where she said a bachelor’s degree is the minimum requirement for early childhood teachers.

Harrison said the JTA has proposed reducing the teacher-to-pupil ratio in Jamaica’s early childhood institutions to increase the number of trained teachers, but the proposal has not received the necessary support.

She argued that investment in early childhood education is essential if Jamaica is to address learning gaps before they become entrenched.

tanesha.mundle@gleanerjm.com