Oh when CBar...go marching in...Oh when Cbar..

[Stonigut]

I hope you right on that. But seriously looking at those numbers show a seriously flawed system, we have 91 of 161 high schools with less than 20percent getting five passes.

There really are two distinct Jamaica's here, maybe three.

What exactly is happening at Trench Town High with 0.8 percent as opposed to tivoli at 9percent, still extremely low at 9 but clearly something is actually happening as opposed to trench town at less than 1 percent.

Find it intriguing to see Merle Grove in the top twenty at 83 percent and Montego Bay high and morant bay high both non traditional schools at 89 and 88 percent, clearly some serious benchmarking needs to be started here.

[Mosiah]

I see it all as empty words, Jangle. Sorry! When they start doing, send come call mi. The emphasis on the sports field is there for us all to see, however.

[Assasin]

Hopefully we seem to have some good prospects in the pipeline. Been awhile we had an outstanding 400 meter runner.

[Islandman]

Ah excuse me Sir Stoni, your information is incorrect and your lack of knowledge about non-Kingston schools is very disappointing.

Both Montego Bay High and Morant Bay are so-called traditional high schools.

Montego Bay High is the sister school of Cornwall College and has been around for 70+ years

Morant Bay High, my Almer Mater , has been around for 50+ years and in fact have been doing quite well academically for a while. I will add that while we consider ourselves to be primarily a high school and not a sports youth academy,we have still produced well known Jamaican sports personalities such as Juliet Cuthbert, Hansle Parchment and Jermaine "Jerry" Hue aka Maestro.

This is why although Don1 has very good arguments about not putting too much importance on the rankings, I do think they serve some use. There are some high profile schools, mostly urban and boys-only, that have been living off their brand names from 30-50 years ago and before these rankings were made public people assumed that they were still "good" schools when some of them are in fact quite awful. Other less known schools, mostly girls-only or co-ed and rural, have been doing a decent job for years without anyone outside of their immediate community being aware of it.

If nothing else these rankings open our eyes to some misconceptions and patterns in the results we are getting.

[Islandman]

Well, at least there is a recognition that all is not well, that is a start.

Georges and JC hit rockbottom and now seem to be on their way to recovery. I think the publicity of the poor rankings helped to shame them into some kind of action. Hopefully C-Bar will follow the same road.

[Assasin]

Morant Bay high has always produced very good athletes and was always in the top 10 school at Girls champs in the 80's and 90s. Was always a pretty good academic school a well. There achievement at champs was without the high profile training and transfer program that many of the other schools had.

[Islandman]

Yep, top 5 at Girls Champs for many years. My father was the manager/head coach of those teams, as well as being a vice principal.

We couldn't beat the Vere Tech juggarnaut but the talent pool was 100% St Thomas-based while Vere as we all know were the pioneers of all-island recruiting.

[Assasin]

I wanted to say top 5 but you know how these "fact" police are? LOL!!!

He did a very good job. He along with St. Mary's high was great rivals out of the east with Morant Bay with Juliet Cutbert, and Mary's high with Jackie Pusey and Doreen Small.

Do you know a 400 hundred runner name Dunn? was a pretty good runner and transfer to Titchfield for Six form. Can't remember his first name but he ran some impressive times.

[Islandman]

St Mary was the standard for a while, they won Girls Champs twice during the Pusey/Small era. When they left school is when Morant Bay started to dominate Eastern Champs.

Juliet Cuthbert and Marcia Brown were the two big stars on the girls team. They were kind of like big sisters to me, stayed at my home many times when they had CARIFTA or other national duties and needed to be taken to stadium or airport. When Juliet made the 1980 Moscow Olympic team at 16 it was like a big family celebration.

I think you are talking about Micheal Dunn, a 200/400m runner. He came from a very talented family. He medalled at Champs a few times, and would have probably been a big star if he went to one of the sports academies.

[Don1]

Well, at least there is a recognition that all is not well, that is a start.

Georges and JC hit rockbottom and now seem to be on their way to recovery. I think the publicity of the poor rankings helped to shame them into some kind of action. Hopefully C-Bar will follow the same road.

Agree that JC hit rock bottom at the turn of the century....especially for the archetype traditional school. No argument there

Disagree 1000% that the flawed ranking had anything to do with efforts to restore the school to full spectrum greatness Jamaica came to expect

The management reforms and massive investments in learning infrastructure began in 2005- 2006 school year...long before the flawed so called ranking emerged. This was driven by alumni recognizing, finally, that comprehensive action was needed to recover the school.

What education needs is not some subjective ranking which gets neophytes excited.. but completely takes focus away from real problems. It needs proper analysis. The MOE School Inspectorate report provides the only analytic base for any useful debate on schools.

Rankings are merely entertainment for shallow thinkers. Serious analysts look to granular studies for systemic failure points and possible FIXES. That's the JC approach. I believe that's of paramount importance.

[Assasin]

Yeah man how could I forget remember Marcia Brown, thanks for the reminder. The Doreen Small family is from my neck of the woods. Still close with some of her family members. Yeah same youth. Micheal Dunn. Very good runner for real, got a little frustrated towards the end but as you say if he went to one of the academies, his name would be calling big time. Eastern Champs was hot back in the days.

[Islandman]

Rankings are entertainment for shallow thinkers

That is certainly true but people respond to them. While the experts and policy makers need more detailed and specific data for analysis, there is value in a public debate based on the data which is used for the ranking , not so much the rankings themselves.

WHY is Vere Tech producing at 17% while another Clarendon-based school, Glenmuir, is producing 95%? Is it the quality of the GSAT intake? Is it the school community support? Is it the school staff and administration? All of the above and more? We need to ask WHY, and not everyone will have the time or inclination to go through a detailed study to find out.

As to the use of the rankings themselves, we cannot use them to determine if school #1 is producing better value than school #4 or if school #160 is worse than school #149 ,BUT we can determine, for example, that the bottom 50 schools are essentially useless as learning institutions.

[Mosiah]

So, how are we going to assess JC's recovery? Certainly, we can't take it from seasoned propagandists like Senator (former) Ruel Reid, CD, JP, MSc, BSc, dip. ed, etc., etc. and yourself!

[Don1]

So, how are we going to assess JC's recovery? Certainly, we can't take it from seasoned propagandists like Senator (former) Ruel Reid, CD, JP, MSc, BSc, dip. ed, etc., etc. and yourself!

LOL! Noice!!

Excellent question!! Happy you asked. As usual D1 has an even more excellent response

If JC is a concern and you don't put stock in the views of passionate supporters...you may assess the standing of the school from the dispassionate MOE Inspection... Here is the JC 2011 report from a 2010 inspection

Reports of all schools inspected

While the JC results are satisfactory to exceptional in some respects...be advised that the data points are 5 years outdated.

Should the school be inspected today the results would be substantially better as a result of our historic & monumental investments

[Mosiah]

So how mi nuh see Munro college on that list?