Retaining Boys in School

Developing a Model of Intervention

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Retaining Boys in School: Developing a Model of Intervention. In Institute Annual Volume 3, Institute of Education, University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica: 2000.

This Chapter reports a study designed to learn lessons from the highly successful two-year programme by the YMCA in Kingston Jamaica for boys between the ages of 12 to 14 years who had dropped out of the formal school system and the attempt to apply the lessons learned from the YMCA non-formal programme in two All-Age schools from which several of the boys had dropped out.

The Chapter reviews theories that have been employed to explain male underachievement as well as some empirical studies done on male underachievement in Jamaica. The study adopted a two-stage action research methodology. Stage one involved gathering information from the 200 boys enrolled in the YMCA programme through questionnaires; focus groups; and case studies; identifying the schools from which the boys dropped out, then interviewing the principals and teachers of two of the schools from which several of the boys had dropped out and then comparing the YMCA programme with the schools’ programmes. Stage two involved designing, implementing and evaluating a model of intervention intended to retain boys in the two schools previously identified. The assumptions and elements of the model of intervention are described and discussed.

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Making Changes :CETT as a catalyst

CETT as a Catalyst for Regional Reform of Teacher Education Policy and Practices

Making Changes: CETT as a Catalyst for Regional Reform of Teacher Education Policy and Practices: (2006) In, Broadening the Vision of Teacher Education in the Caribbean. Editors Rose Davies and Lorna Down. Institute of Education Publication Series No. 2. Institute of Education University of the West Indies Mona, Kingston Jamaica. Pp 44 – 62

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), through the Summit of the Americas Initiative 2001 proposed by President George Bush, sponsored the Centers of Excellence in Teacher Training (CETT) in Latin America and the Caribbean with the expressed purpose of improving the teachers of reading in Grades 1 to 3. The assumption of this initiative was that achieving excellence in the teaching of reading in the early grades of primary education was of great strategic importance in teaching students to read by the end of Grade 3 which was critical to the overall improvement of primary education given the centrality of reading in the curriculum. Three CETTs were established: the Andean; Central American and Caribbean. The three CETTs were mandated to target schools serving disadvantaged communities. Each CETT was given the autonomy to design itself and to operate in accordance with the imperatives of its region.

Making Changes briefly describes the general components of the CETT initiative and the five main components for which resources were provided but gives details of the Caribbean CETT in terms of:

  1. Its location in the Joint Boards of Teacher Education (JBTE) of the Schools of Education of the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, and Mona campuses, but with its headquarters at JBTE, Mona
  2. Its organizational structure
  3. The three major strategies employed and the initial implementations of these strategies
  4. Challenges encountered in implementation in the five countries in which it was first established namely Belize, Guyana, Jamaica, St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines
  5. Early accomplishments.
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Partnership for Change: Using Computers

Using Computers to Improve Instruction in Jamaica’s Schools

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Technical Paper Series for Latin America and the Caribbean: Technical Paper 2

ABEL 2: Clearinghouse for Basic Education, Washington D. C: 1996

The Foreword for this Monograph is written by Benjamin Alvarez of the Academy of Educational Development and the Preface by Sarah Wright of the Latin American and Caribbean Bureau of the United States Agency for International Development.

Partnership for Change: Using Computers to Improve Instruction in Jamaica’s Schools is a case study detailing educational reform which commenced among non-states in Jamaica in the 1990s who, for different reasons, determined that it was imperative to introduce computers in schools although at the time this was not Government policy. The Monograph outlines the governance of public education in Jamaica based on two seemingly conflicting principles of decentralized management by individual school boards with legal authority to hire and fire teachers, disciple students, run their financial affairs and control the use of its premises and centralized State directed policy making, planning, development and financing as the background for allowing and understanding educational policy beginning in the periphery.

The Monograph also described educational reform in the post-independence period after 1962 which brought about both a ‘paradigm shift and a quantum leap’ in Jamaican education but which was not celebrated at the end of the 1980s because of new demands on education arising from globalization, inventions in information technology and their pervasive effects on society. It points to the fact that in the 1990s Jamaica embarked upon a project driven path to educational reform.

The substance of the case study is the detailing of the serendipitous actions of the Jamaican Computer Society, through its Education Foundation; premised on producing competent computer professionals;  a Private Public Partnership forged by a prominent CEO of an Insurance Company focused on remedial education in mathematics and language; and the Island Trading Company engaged in community tourism; and individual school communities committed to the advancement of their schools combined to mobilize actions that resulted in educational reform. In so doing the case study provides descriptions of action taken by primary and/or secondary schools in Montego Bay; Above Rocks in St Mary; five districts of St Elizabeth; and Oracabessa and Jack’s Hill, St Mary.

The Monographs concludes by examining and interpreting the case study from four theoretical perspectives of reform: as a radical break with the past resulting in launching new paths; as a rational and technical process formulated by experts to improve efficiency and effectiveness; as comparative adjustments to modernity in homes, schools and offices; as political trade-off between competing stakeholders and actors. In addition, the Monograph outlines some lessons learned.

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Education for All in the Caribbean in the 1990’s

Retrospect and Prospect. EFA in the Caribbean: Assessment 2000

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Part of the UNESCO series:

Education for All in the Caribbean in the 1990s: Retrospect and Prospect. EFA in the Caribbean: Assessment 2000. (2000) Monograph Series 19 UNESCO. Kingston.

Foreword by Colin Power, Deputy Director of UNESCO

The World Conference on Education for All held in Jomtien, Thailand in March 1990 set six major goals for basic education that was to be achieved by the year 2000. The World Forum in Dakar, Senegal in 2000 received assessments of what has been achieved following Jomtien and set Education for All goals that should be achieved by 2015. The Monograph Series commissioned by UNESCO records the 2000 Assessment. Education for All in the Caribbean in the 1990s: Retrospect and Prospect examined what had been achieved in the Caribbean over the decade of the 1990s in the six target dimensions and, using these achievements as the base, projected what should be the priorities going forward for the Caribbean in the first decades of 21st century.

The Assessment showed that although different countries of the Caribbean had approached the EFA goals differently substantial progress had been made in achieving or surpassing these goals. Among the main conclusions were the following:

  1. The Caribbean had included secondary education as part of the basic education although secondary education was not part of the EFA goals.
  2. The English, Dutch, and the French-speaking Caribbean had all progressed in achieving EFA quantitative goals with respect to early childhood, primary and adult literacy education with the English and Dutch Caribbean making much greater progress that the more modest achievements of Haiti.
  3. With respect to quality, the Dutch and English Caribbean may have been close to the limit of what could reasonably be expected from existing levels of resources, technology, teacher quality, and school organization.

The Monograph identified ten priority areas for EFA in the Caribbean in the first decades of the 21st century. These were overcoming the limits of existing organization, human and financial resources and traditional technology; the status and conditions of service of teachers; enhancing data management capacities; enhancing learning environments and enriching learning experience; establishing common quantitative and quality standards; motivating parents and students in the current socioeconomic climate; delivering and measuring basic education provided to adults; harmonizing and standardizing basic education across the Caribbean; setting targets and timeframes for achieving universal secondary; and strengthening the coordination of the EFA movement in the sub-region.

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    Professor Errol Miller has had a rather unique professional and public service career which has given him almost a three hundred and sixty-degree exposure within the education enterprise. He has been a high school science teacher; university lecturer in science education; college principal; university professor, chancellor of a university college, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Education; independent senator in the Parliament of Jamaica; a president of the teachers’ association; a chairman of the board of the state broadcasting corporation; chairman of the Electoral Commission of Jamaica; a researcher; an author; an international consultant; chairman or member of several school and college boards.

    Jamaican Primary Education

    A Review of Policy Relevant Studies

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    Jamaican Primary Education: A Review of Policy-Relevant Studies

    Published by Green Lizard Press, University of the West Indies, Mona 1997: Jamaica. The Foreword is by Professor Noel McGinn of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

    This Monograph is divided into two Sections. Section 1 is a review of fifty studies done by different researchers that were selected on the basis that they were relevant to education policy making in Jamaica with respect to primary education. The reviews cite and comment on the studies highlighting what is judged to be their implications for policymaking. Section 2 contains the abstracts of the fifty selected studies. These abstracts constitute a more detailed account of each study that could be included in the review. These abstracts are included for the benefit of persons interested in the studies or their conclusions but do not have ready access to the Documentation Centre of the School of Education, Mona.

    The Monograph includes a Model of Mutual Stakeholder Accountability, proposed by Miller, in which the different stakeholders in the education system hold each other accountable for different aspects of the operation of the education system. The State is held accountable for providing public education. Principals are held accountable for the management of schools and teachers for instruction in classrooms. Parents are held accountable for the health of their children, their regular school attendance and for supplying the implements of learning. Communities are held accountable for the safety and protection of schools located in them. Students are held accountable for their learning.

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