Political hacks fuelling school chaos

JAMAICA Teachers’ Association (JTA) President Mark Malabver has charged that part of the indiscipline challenge being experienced across multiple schools is tied to the fact that school boards comprise political hacks rather than “competent, qualified” individuals.

“Many of our schools lack effective governance at the board level because there is a lack of quality at our school boards. And I am saying this because many of the problems that we are having with the school boards has to do with the political [interference],” Malabver argued during last Thursday’s education meeting organised by the Kiwanis Club of North St Andrew, themed ‘Safer Schools Now: Strategies to Combat Violence in Schools’.

“Members of Parliament are choosing individuals to sit on boards, believe it or not, and some of these board members don’t have qualifications; some of these board members don’t even know what a school looks like. The only thing some of them know about running a school is the fact that they used to run up and down in a school,” Malabver added.

He said “the only thing” such individuals “know about board and the management of a board is the fact that they used to sit on a board bench”.

“It is something that we have to treat with, because the quality of our boards impacts the school and discipline, because if you fail to set the standards of the school board then these things are going to happen,” the JTA president declared.

“For too long our politicians have used boards as a means through which to reward political loyalty, instead of putting qualified, competent people on the boards to effectively guide the schools, and that needs to change,” he said further.

Malabver’s comments come nearly a year after Education Transformation Oversight Committee (ETOC) Chair Dr Adrian Stokes indicated that there was a “major effort” underway to reform the operations of public school boards. According to Dr Stokes, the application process would be revamped to lift the profile of individuals wishing to serve in this capacity.

“Jamaica’s education system is relatively decentralised, with significant responsibility given to school boards to oversee performance. This means that the method of choosing boards is extremely important. Anecdotally, schools with strong boards tend to perform better than those with dysfunctional boards. With this in mind, a major effort is underway to reform our school boards in Jamaica, [and] two types of reforms are being pursued,” Stokes told a Ministry of Education ETOC press conference at Jamaica House in St Andrew last July.

The ETOC chair said to improve the cadre of individuals seeking to serve on school boards, the application process will be made “very transparent, similar to what obtains in the wider public sector”.

“Soon, individuals who wish to serve on a school board will upload their CVs and other relevant information to a website managed by the ministry. These individuals will be vetted to ensure that they are fit and proper, with the ultimate goal of matching competencies to the specific needs of schools,” Stokes explained.

At last week’s meeting Malabver said the incident data collected monthly by the ministry needs to be used to help tailor the kinds of interventions needed.

“Our Ministry of Education is inadvertently complicit at times in helping to undermine discipline in our schools,” the JTA president contended.

“For example, a boy violates the school rules and comes to school improperly attired and the school takes certain actions. The parent makes a call because they know someone at the ministry and then, all of a sudden, the school administration comes under pressure because they have a different view as to how these things are to be managed. Administrators are there. Let them carry out their jobs and their functions,” Malabver stated.

“Until we get to the point where the Ministry of Education steps away and allows these sorts of things to be treated with by competent and qualified individuals, and not seek to impose themselves because somebody knows somebody in the ministry, then they will continue to undermine our schools and the governance structures. Until we get to a place where schools are really safe spaces, and discipline is inculcated like it was inculcated in us, then we are not going anywhere,” he added.

Noting that Singapore, which recently approved caning for boys under new anti-bullying guidelines in schools, has one of the best-ranked education systems globally, Malabver said while he is not calling for Jamaica to return to that modality to deal with the issue of indiscipline in schools, appropriate measures have to be explored to address it.

MALABVER… the quality of our boards impacts the school and discipline