Monthly Archives: September 2015

MINISTER of Education Ronald Thwaites says the recent decline in performance in mathematics in the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) points to maths educators’ continued challenge with teaching the subject to students.

Performance in the 2015 sitting of the GSAT declined some 3.7 per cent.

Speaking at the opening of a two-day Jamaica National Building Society (JNBS)-sponsored seminar on The Singapore Method of Teaching Mathematics, Minister Thwaites argued that there is not enough critical thinking taking place in classrooms.

“It wasn’t that we made the test harder or that our children are less bright than they used to be, but rather that the questions were phrased in a way that encouraged critical thinking rather than simply remembering a particular formula or application. This opens the whole door to the methodology of teaching,” Thwaites told the seminar, organised by LMH Publishers and its Singaporean publishing partner, Marshall Cavendish Education.

Thwaites maintained that insufficient maths specialists in schools; poor teaching and teacher qualification remained some of the major factors contributing to the country’s underperformance in mathematics, which he underscored, is critical to the country’s current development pursuit.

According to Minister Thwaites, a significant number of teachers at the primary and secondary levels are unqualified to teach the subject.

“Thirty-five per cent of primary teachers themselves never attained a pass in the Caribbean Secondary School Certificate (CSEC) mathematics and a mere nine per cent of secondary teachers are fully qualified, both as to the content and the methodology, to teach mathematics at Grade 11,” the minister revealed.

“Our census data reveals that of the 1,784 persons teaching maths at the secondary level, 704 have no qualifications in that area, so several secondary schools have no trained mathematics on their staff,” he added.

He noted that although Jamaica spends more on education than Singapore, Jamaica has not experienced the same “proportionate return” as its Asian counterparts.

Jamaica invests some six-and-a-half per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in education, compared to Singapore which spends three per cent of GDP.

Against this background, Minister Thwaites said the ministry would be spending approximately $300 million to train and deploy 84 maths specialists to coach teachers in the system.

Supporting Minister Thwaites’ position, Gavin Beckford, the executive for marketing, sales and promotions at JNBS, said the teaching of mathematics in Jamaica remains too rigid, forcing students to cram and regurgitate formulas. He noted that although maths is a natural part of the human experience, many people fear it because of experiences in the classroom.

“Many students can’t appreciate how trigonometry and algebra, for example, will ever add value to their lives because there is not enough conversation taking place in the classroom to help them make the connection between maths concepts and their daily lives.”
 

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Maths-decline-points-to-teaching-challenges–says-Thwaites_19218845

Local education institutions are now seeking the help of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica in improving the performance of students leaving the primary and tertiary education level.

Last year, the Jamaica National Building Society (JNBS) launched an education leadership partnership programme – iLead – with the Ministry of Education to target 15 of the country’s weakest performing primary and secondary schools.

Since then, JNBS has committed roughly $160 million in assisting schools in need of immediate support in the parishes of Portland, St Mary and St Thomas. While the new initiative has improved the education level of roughly 1.6 per cent of the country’s primary and secondary schools, JNBS along with the participants of the programme are now hoping that other private organisations will come onboard to support a larger of individuals.

“While its a drop in the bucket, I think it’s 15 schools less than what the number was. The ripple effect that needs to happen is that rather than a loud outcry when the rankings are published with comments that the schools are under performing, put your money where our mouth is,” principal of Robert Lightbourne High School which is a beneficiary of the iLead programme, Alfred Thomas told editors and reporters at the Jamaica Observer Monday Exchange.

“Some of these corporate companies need to come on board just like JN is doing and assist. The Ministry of Education has all the information as to the schools that are in need of immediate attention and the reality is that the Ministry does not have all the resources so the schools are having a serious struggle.”

“We are fortunate to be on this programme and we have gotten assistance but we still need a lot more. So can you imagine the schools that don’t have the assistance, we need more support. I’m sure there is a corporate company changing out computers for their staff and we would gladly take those computers because we are badly in need of that kind of equipment,” Thomas added.

Also speaking at the Monday Exchange, director for education programmes at JN Foundation, Renee Rattray told the Business Observer that the shift in monitoring of performance in the education sector started through the introduction of the National Education Inspectorate (NEI).

In 2010, the NEI completed its first round of inspections on 30 public schools at the primary and secondary level. The initiative focused on eight key indicators of school effectiveness including leadership and management, teaching and learning, students’ performance in regional and national examinations, safety, security and well-being; among others.

By highlighting the strengths and weakness of the approaches and practices of the schools, valuable feedback and lessons are encapsulated in comprehensive report which ultimately determined the schools which were lagging behind.

“That started the discussion some years ago because every school is being judged at the same standard and it was now shining light on the schools and on our educators. And so I believe that was a major shift in our thinking about holding ourselves responsible as educators for the outcomes of our students,” Rattray stated.

iLead is a three-year programme which initially targeted five schools including Robert Lightbourne High, Islington High, Brimmer Vale High, Port Maria Primary and Buff Bay Primary in the first year of operation. St Thomas Technical, Happy Grove High, Martin Primary, Windsor Castle Primary and Retreat Primary and Junior High will be added to the programme in September.

“We are really excited to have St Thomas Technical on the programme and it’s new for us because they are a vocational school,” Rattray stated.

“I’m really interested in seeing how differently they operate after the programme and I think the private sector has to take keen interest in this one because that’s where the skills are coming from and as a technical school, when you go into the labs St Thomas Technical has almost nothing,” she added.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/business/Schools-seek-more-private-sector-help_19219926

JN Foundation’s successful education leadership programme is set to engage students of the targeted schools in personal development training.

“It’s really important to have their voice,” Dr Renee Rattray, director of education programmes at JN Foundation, told this week’s Jamaica Observer Monday Exchange.

“We had an entrepreneurship aspect in our previous programme — Centres of Excellence — and so we are looking forward to introducing that aspect to this year’s programme. We also want to implement some financial literacy programmes, have motivational talks with the students, and really focus on their personal development.”

Dr Rattray was among guests giving an update on the iLead education leadership programme, a partnership between JN Foundation and the Ministry of Education that aims at enhancing student performance by improving leadership in school administrations.

Five schools — Brimmer Vale High, Islington High and Port Maria Primary in St Mary; Buff Bay Primary in Portland; and Robert Lightbourne High in St Thomas — are now benefiting from the programme, which was launched last year.

Another five — St Thomas Technical High, Happy Grove High, Martin Primary, Windsor Castle Primary, and Retreat Primary and Junior High — will be added in September.

These schools are all located in the ministry’s region two, which comprises the parishes of Portland, St Mary and St Thomas, and is considered to be Jamaica’s weakest-performing region. The schools have been identified as being in need of immediate assistance.

In addition to Dr Rattray, the guests included Cathy Rattray Samuel, operations manager for the iLead programme; Carla Ruddock, acting principal, Port Maria Primary; Alfred Thomas, principal, Robert Lightbourne High; Frank Peart, senior teacher, Buff Bay Primary School; and Yasheika Blackwood-Grant, education officer with responsibility for region two.

“One of the principles built into the iLead project is celebrating student progress,” said Blackwood-Grant.

That point was corroborated by Dr Rattray, who said: “In many instances, when a student is in a school that has a negative perception, they are not used to having persons celebrate their achievements. The iLead initiative focuses on empowering these students, and getting them to feel good about themselves. So in all these schools that are part of the initiative, there is evidence of the schools celebrating the students’ successes.”

The programme, Dr Rattray said, will work intensively with the leadership in the project schools, comprising the school boards, principals, and vice-principals, as well as the education officers, to develop a culture of high expectation for academic success in each school.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Students-to-get-training-from-iLead-programme_19219826

Senior teachers, the middle managers in the nation’s schools, have been urged to increase their supervision of and assistance to their younger colleagues as one measure to improve the output of the education sector.

According to Dr Renee Rattray, director of education programmes at the JN Foundation, middle managers in schools must recognise that their positions are not simply meritorious rewards but roles which require them to be the engines of school improvement.

Addressing heads of departments and grade coordinators from St Mary, Portland and St Thomas-based schools participating in the JN Foundation’s iLead programme, Rattray argued that middle leaders in schools should recognise that they can transform their schools through the people who report to them.

“In many schools, they (senior teachers) are not providing an adequate support framework for teachers,” said Rattray, as she charged that many senior teachers do not have a full understanding of their leadership and management roles.

According to Rattray, many of these middle managers are promoted to positions of seniority without adequate preparation.

“There are pockets of excellence. However, they are not being pulled together by a strong leadership team that can articulate a vision and support people to achieve objectives.”

Rattray charged that often there is not enough support for new teachers fresh out of colleges, who are sometimes placed in the most difficult situations upon entry to the schools. She said senior teachers should be the ones who help to provide this support.

“We need to be working alongside educators to model what effective teaching looks like. Unfortunately, this is not established practice in our schools and in the system. In most other professions, people need to shadow and work alongside others in order to develop their craft.

“It’s important for teachers to, themselves, become learners within a well-oiled professional learning community if we are to see the kinds of improvement that we expect,” said Rattray.

Texas-based educational professional development consultant Misty Miller, who also addressed the middle leaders workshop, argued that senior teachers should be able to identify the varying capacities of those they guide so that they can deploy persons effectively to get the job done.

SELF-EVALUATION

According to Miller, it is important for the middle managers to be able to critically evaluate their own leadership and the abilities of those in their remit.

“You can’t say that as a leader ‘I am doing well’, or ‘my data looks good’ and ‘I’m great as a leader’ when you are not building and strengthening the people around you,” said Miller.

“It’s not our job to make people teach like us … it’s our job to promote best practices and indicate how best practices are executed, which will look different in every classroom.”

The iLead Programme, which has been implemented in five schools in the parishes of Portland, St Mary and St Thomas, has been working closely with school leaders, including heads of departments and grade coordinators, over the past year to address leadership and management problems.

The programme, guided by the JN Foundation, has targeted select schools which were cited by the National Education Inspectorate as being in need of critical support, to build their leadership capacity and improve student performance through improved teaching as well as to create an enhanced school environment.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20150726/senior-teachers-must-do-more-improve-schools

National senior netballer Sasha Gaye-Henry says she will be hanging up her Sunshine Girls bib after she returns from representing Jamaica at the Netball World Cup in Sydney, Australia in August.

The centre court player was thanking Jamaica National Building Society (JNBS) for its support in helping her to attend three Netball World Championships since 2007. One of the most experienced players on the 12-member squad, Henry says she will get more involved in coaching after she retires.

Henry stated that the consistent support she had received from JNBS was unusual and encouraged more firms to contribute to the national team in this way.

She was addressing Netball Jamaica executives as well as representatives of JNBS and the Gold Rush Down Under campaign at a luncheon at the Spanish Court Hotel yesterday.

Gavin Beckford, JNBS executive for marketing and brand management, responded by thanking Henry for her outstanding efforts on and off the court in support of netball in the country over the years and wished her success in Australia, as well as in retirement.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/sports/20150730/henry-thanks-sponsor-jn-plans-retirement

ROBERT Lightbourne High in Trinityville, St Thomas, which previously struggled with underperformance is reaping great success under its new leadership as it now boasts a 43 per cent increase in maths, up from zero ,and a 35 per cent hike in English in the 2014 Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC).

The school which was also severely under-populated has since received approximately 100 transfers from other institutions in the parish.

Interim Principal Alfred Thomas said the improvements in maths and English came as a result of the keen focus on literacy and numeracy as the school struggled with children reading below their grade level, some as low as the pre-primer stage.

“Seventy-four per cent of students were reading below the grade four level. We had students who were struggling to identify letters; therefore, we decided that it made no sense to have students struggling to identify letters; and, you are asking them to do 13 subjects,” the principal said.

Against that background, the number of subjects carried by some students were reduced to eight; and, higher priority given to improving their literacy and numeracy competencies.

The school which is a participant in the JN Foundation iLead educational leadership programme is steadily pulling itself up from the bottom rung of the secondary education ladder since it was ranked at the bottom of secondary schools by Educate Jamaica and flagged as being in need of critical support by the National Education Inspectorate.

Acknowledging the challenges faced, at a recent town hall meeting held at the institution, Thomas explained that the school has managed to strategically use the difficulties it has been facing as opportunities for growth.

“We have turned some of our negatives into a positive; and, used our challenges as opportunities to tell others about Robert Lightbourne; our issues, and to ask for help,” he revealed to residents from the surrounding Trinityville community.

With the support of the Ministry of Education and the JN Foundation, through the iLead Programme, other institutions and individual benefactors, the high school is now recording improvements in its performance, as the expectations of students have also increased.

“We want to become a school of choice with a positive image, where students succeed through perseverance…and we all know the history of our image,” Thomas said, pointing to the consistent disciplinary challenges the school had with students, in the past.

“We had to raise the expectations of our students, because if we expect nothing from them, then that is what we are going to get,” he said.

And, raising their expectations have come from implementing simple measures the school leadership discovered, such as: changing the school uniform from a dull purple tunic for girls and plain khakis for boys, to white blouses coordinated with energetic purple skirts for girls, accentuated by matching purple ties, diagonally striped with white, which both girls and boys wear..

In addition, a fresh coat of paint and general spruce up of the physical plant has helped to bring a sense of pride to students and administrators.

Student Clinton Prendergast who once struggled with reading now has six CSEC subjects and is getting ready to sit some more.

“I never knew I had this strength to be this student that I am now,” Prendergast said. “When I left Trinityville Primary and came to Robert Lightbourne… with the negative things people said about this school, I said to myself: “I won’t reach anywhere; but, I am a better person now because of my teachers and the work the school has been doing,” the eleventh grader said.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/On-the-rise-_19221506

Educational leadership expert Dr Renee Rattray says there are too many schools that are not focusing on their core business of teaching and learning.

According to Dr Rattray, who heads the private sector-led iLead programme, too many school leaders, whom she calls “chief learning officers”, focus on issues that are non-indicators of the quality of learning taking place in their institutions.

“When principals are asked: ‘How is your school doing?’ They respond: ‘Oh, we did so well in 4H; we entered JCDC and we received one gold medal; and all our teachers are qualified.’ In other words, they say everything except how their students are learning,” Dr Rattray said.

She was addressing 50 principals and vice-principals attending the Ministry of Education’s Back-to-School Conference at the Jamaica Conference Centre in downtown Kingston recently.

“What we focus on is not necessarily results. Persons who are recognised for being outstanding principals and teachers in other countries receive accolades because their academic turnaround has been significant,” Dr Rattray argued. “Therefore, it is very important for us to ensure we are focusing on the right things.”

The Harvard-trained former principal and national school inspector noted, for instance, that more principals and vice-principals need to be observing what teachers are doing in classrooms and providing them with adequate feedback.

“We spend endless periods of time talking about writing lesson plans and looking through teachers’ books; making sure they write lesson plans; and, we never visit the classrooms to see what is going on there,” Dr Rattray stated.

“Don’t get me wrong, lesson planning is important. What I am saying is the only way a leader can know if learning is taking place is when you actually observe the progress; and not during appraisal time, but constantly.”

She said feedback to teachers should be detailed, so that they can appreciate what areas need improvement and what their areas of strength are. She also noted that the only feedback many teachers receive from their supervisors is the term “satisfactory”, but that is not enough.

“Similar to students, schools must add value to educators, who should also be learning and growing constantly,” she declared. “We must raise that bar. Teachers also want to know how they are doing; and everybody needs a coach.”

Dr Rattray said feedback should meld seamlessly into teachers’ professional development and be incorporated into the philosophy of school leadership.

“Research has shown that workshop-type professional development, which is what we practise mostly, is the most ineffective form of professional development. Learning on the job, with senior staff, mentors and coaches is the way to go; observing each other and sharing best practices is where real change happens,” she emphasised.

“Awesome leaders foster this kind of collaboration in their schools so that there is always continuous learning for teachers,” she maintained.

Beyond the issue of teacher development, Dr Rattray also urged the principals to do more to hold teachers to account, which she noted was difficult if they were not observing teachers in the classroom.

“What we say that we do often is not necessarily what happens,” she said. “Therefore, we must hold our teachers accountable and be fearless about it.”

Recounting a stark discovery she made at a school while she was an inspector, Dr Rattray underscored that principals have to be vigilant about maintaining standards by being meticulous and using data.

“I was in a school a few years ago,” she recounted, “and in that school the head of department for mathematics had been the head for 25 years and had never passed maths. However, the principal had plaques all over the wall that he was the greatest, although the examination data revealed that most of his students failed the subject during those 25 years,” she disclosed.

“We have to be accountable. We have to reduce the levels of mediocrity in our education system,” she said to applause.

iLead is an educational leadership programme developed by the JN Foundation and is being implemented in partnership with the Ministry of Education.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Focus-on-the-core-business-of-schools–educator-tells-principals_19221956

It started with one Mac computer acquired by the May Pen Y’s Men Service Club nearly a year ago courtesy of the Jamaica National Building Society (JNBS) Foundation.

And, last week, the organisation opened a fully furnished computer lab, with 14 computers, a most welcome addition to Montclair, Clarendon.

In total appreciation of the Jamaican saying ‘one one cocoa full basket,’ the lab was officially opened at the Astel Parkinson Community Centre, with the prime objective to train young people in that community to become self-sufficient in information communication technology (ICT).

“We wanted more young people to be aware of the Y Service Club. we also wanted to train them in areas they were interested in and most wanted to learn computer graphic design,” said Claris McDonald, project officer, May Pen Y Service Club. “We, therefore, reached out to the JNBS Foundation, which assisted us with acquiring our first computer to get started, and, later, the Universal Service Fund (USF) came to our assistance.”

With a graphic design class up and running, more than 20 students participated in the programme and have demonstrated their new skills on assignments, with the most recent being the designing and printing of programmes for the opening of the lab.

creative skills

One of the beneficiaries, Shanice Smith, a grade 11 student at the Garvey Maceo High School, said her ability to use her creative skills as a means to secure part-time employment is quite exciting.

“I used to see posters mounted around town, and I always want to learn how to design them, therefore, I was excited to participate in the graphic design course. I have learned so much, and now I am making posters, business cards, logos, and invitations. I am also very happy that my instructor helps us as students to secure clients and to earn,” said Smith.

Addressing the lab-opening ceremony, Rose Miller, grants manager at the JNBS Foundation, highlighted that the foundation continued to believe in the power of technology and demonstrated this by supporting initiatives that promote increased access to ICT.

“Our foundation was instrumental in providing your service club with a computer to establish a course in computer graphic design, and it’s heartening to see the bar being raised for the opening of a computer lab, with the assistance of the Universal Service Fund, which provided additional equipment,” she said.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20150805/montclair-clarendon-welcomes-new-computer-lab