JAPSS chief warns parents against prestige-driven PEP school transfers

Anniona Jones, president of the Jamaica Association of Principals of Secondary Schools (JAPSS), is pressing parents to think carefully before seeking to move their children to different high schools after Primary Exit Profile (PEP) placement. She said those choices should rest on what will best support a student’s growth, not on how prestigious a campus is thought to be.

Jones also warned school leaders not to open their doors to large numbers of transfer applicants chiefly to boost revenue. Overcrowding, she argued, can weaken teaching quality and pile unnecessary pressure on staff and limited resources.

She reported knowing of schools that have already logged 60 or more transfer applications. While she recognises that every parent wants the best for their child, she stressed that not every institution is set up to deliver the academic support some students require.

“We have to be very careful about how we think of some schools as intervention schools or schools for children with low academic aptitudes, because as the children start to do better, people are still not going to want to place their children necessarily in those schools. You have schools that have low levels of enrolment, and then you have other schools that are bursting at the seams,” Jones said.

“It becomes an issue, though, for school governance to be able to say to a principal and have that conversation at the board level that, ‘Listen, this school was built for X amount.’ I still don’t know why we have schools on [the] shift [system] when we have so many schools that are underpopulated.

“It’s really…a policy issue, but a board can make a decision that we are going to limit our school sizes to no more than 22 to 30 children per class,” she told the Jamaica Observer.

Jones maintained that caps on class size matter especially where science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects are taught, arguing those disciplines work best with fewer students in the room. Smaller groups, she added, would also lighten teachers’ load by cutting the number of books to mark and freeing time for sharper feedback and one-to-one attention.

She observed that many schools hesitate to shrink enrolment because funding is still tied largely to headcount, so fewer students means less money. Even so, she welcomed the Government’s shift toward a fairer financing framework, calling it a constructive move.

Jones further flagged the rising expense parents face when chasing transfers, pointing to application fees of between $1,000 and $5,000 at some schools.

“If you look at the cost for transfer requests, you could have a school, in theory, getting a request of 100 children wanting to come in. If you charge each child $1,000, that’s $100,000 even if your school can only take in 20, so you could do a lot with an additional $100,000. Some parents are going around paying five schools $1,000 a pop or more,” she said.

She continued: “Some schools, I hear, transfers are as much as $5,000 just to request a transfer, and they are not guaranteed to get in. Parents have to also look at that as well and understand that placing your child in a school where your child may be in the bottom quarter, or smack in the middle, may not be as good for your child as placing them in a school where your child may come first, second, or third and get a confidence boost, or placing a child in a school that can cater to their needs.”

As principal of Haile Selassie High School, Jones noted that traditional high schools often offer broader academic and extracurricular menus, yet can also cost families more. By comparison, she said, some non-traditional schools may match a child’s strengths and interests more closely while remaining cheaper to attend.

“Sometimes we have to be very discerning that we don’t spend all the money to buy the car but turn around and can’t buy gas and can’t change the tyre, or can’t deal with the servicing and upkeep after the free servicing is finished.

“Schools need support to grow, so allow your child to be placed in an institution that can give you the financial wiggle room as well, to do some other things for your child. Otherwise, your child may go into these spaces, can’t function, and you can’t participate fully to keep the school offering what you say you want,” she said.

She also called on parents to help make schools safer and more nurturing, especially non-traditional campuses still burdened by a reputation for violence.

“Send us the best version of your children, then we wouldn’t have to worry about the children, and every space can be a safe, developing, nurturing space for every child to be able to do all the things that they want to do, if parents are willing to help build it, fund it, create it,” Jones said.

“We have the buildings, we have these teachers, we have the class sizes; it makes better sense to me to place your child in a smaller school to treat with the PEP score,” she added.