Region One education chief presses schools to enter more students for external exams

Western Bureau: Education leaders at the 45 high schools in the Ministry of Education, Skills, Youth and Information’s Region One are being pressed to stop keeping doubtful performers off external examination lists.

Over the past several years, some school managers have faced criticism for screening out candidates they regard as weak, supposedly to shield their schools’ reputations and lift reported pass rates.

Ottis Brown, director of regional educational services for Region One, addressed the issue at the ministry’s three-day Back-to-School Conference 2026 in Hanover. The gathering drew school board chairmen and vice-chairmen along with principals and vice-principals.

Brown argued that pupils who have spent at least five years in secondary school should not leave empty-handed. After looking at Region One’s external examination figures, he asked: “Colleagues, don’t you think it is an indictment for children to come into our hands at grade seven, and then they are leaving at grade 11, and they can do no subject or only one subject?”

“We have got to change it; I do not like that type of discrimination,” he said.

He stressed that school leaders are central to reforms that would help every learner, including those who progress more slowly, and that teaching methods must shift so more students can succeed.

“I know that with good pedagogical approaches, the children can do well,” Brown said. He recalled settings where candidates who would typically have been barred from external papers were entered instead and did well.

“Recommend the children to do the examinations. We do not want any more criminals, and education tend to steer them away from the wrong path,” he said, adding that one student’s achievement often motivates peers.

“Put away the old spin about ‘I do not want my school to look a certain way’, to recommend only 20 of a batch of 90, when, if you had recommended 90, perhaps 40 or 50 would have passed,” Brown continued.

He also warned staff to watch candidates who are entered for exams but miss school often, and to look into those absences so attendance improves.

Jamaica has about 161 publicly funded high schools, 45 of them in Region One. Brown noted that the region has the ministry’s biggest student enrolment and the largest teams of academic and non-academic staff.