Tweet
EDITORIAL - Lessons From Kensington, Half-Way Tree Primary
Published: Wednesday | February 22, 2012
This newspaper has consistently argued that in the delivery of education, as with the management of almost any enterprise, the quality of leadership matters. So, too, does holding people accountable.
The unassailable logic of these maxims has recently been paraded in this newspaper, including in two articles this past Sunday. Before that was the publication by the Ministry of Education of the results of the annual assessment for numeracy among children at grade four.
Despite an eight-percentage-point improvement over the previous year's performance, only 49 per cent of the 45,769 students who sat the test in June 2011 achieved the 50 per cent, or higher, mark required for students to be deemed to have mastered numeracy. Another 29 per cent were within a few marks of mastery, while the other 22 per cent were in the clear non-mastery ranks.
There can be reasonable questions of whether a 50 per cent mark is sufficiently high to equate to mastery of a subject. But that, for now, is not the issue. What is of note are the performances of two schools, especially Kensington Primary in Greater Portmore, St Catherine. The other is Half-Way Tree Primary in St Andrew.
Top of the class
Both these are government institutions, not private preparatory schools whose test scores tend to outstrip, by wide margins, those of public schools. For instance, while, nationally, 49 per cent of the nine- and 10-year-olds who do the grade four test mastered math, the rate in government primary schools was 43 per cent. The national figure was dragged up by the strong performance of under 5,000 preparatory school students who did the test.
It is within that context that Kensington and Half-Way Tree Primary schools are significant. They had mastery of 91 per cent and 83 per cent, respectively, in the grade four numeracy assessment, the highest among public schools with more than 20 children faced the markers. Two hundred and five sat the test at Kensington, while 184 did so at Half-Way Tree. The latter is a relatively long-standing school that is accustomed to success under principal Carol O'Connor-Clarke. Kensington is in its 16th year and has recently come into success.
As its principal, Carlene McCalla-Francis, told this newspaper, it used to be that "nobody in Greater Portmore wanted to attend the school".
Its performance was poor, it was run-down, and seemed on the way to becoming another failing school - before Mrs McCalla-Francis. When the area's parliamentary representative offered to mobilise the original builder to help with its refurbishing, Mrs McCalla-Francis opted instead for an industrial stove, with which she launched a food business for the students. The school then paid its way.
demanding results
But just as important, Mrs McCalla-Francis has high expectations for her students and believes that they, like her staff, must be held to account for performance. "I look at my students and tell them that I want 'A's."
Half-Way Tree Primary has long been proving that, as was again highlighted in its grade four scores and outlined by Lindel Hart, its grade four coordinator, in her article on Sunday on the school's approach to teaching math. "Mathematics must be fun-filled and at no given time should be presented as a bag of abstract ideas," she wrote.
And Mrs O'Connor-Clarke holds her staff, and parents, to account. The education ministry can learn things from these schools.
Published: Wednesday | February 22, 2012
This newspaper has consistently argued that in the delivery of education, as with the management of almost any enterprise, the quality of leadership matters. So, too, does holding people accountable.
The unassailable logic of these maxims has recently been paraded in this newspaper, including in two articles this past Sunday. Before that was the publication by the Ministry of Education of the results of the annual assessment for numeracy among children at grade four.
Despite an eight-percentage-point improvement over the previous year's performance, only 49 per cent of the 45,769 students who sat the test in June 2011 achieved the 50 per cent, or higher, mark required for students to be deemed to have mastered numeracy. Another 29 per cent were within a few marks of mastery, while the other 22 per cent were in the clear non-mastery ranks.
There can be reasonable questions of whether a 50 per cent mark is sufficiently high to equate to mastery of a subject. But that, for now, is not the issue. What is of note are the performances of two schools, especially Kensington Primary in Greater Portmore, St Catherine. The other is Half-Way Tree Primary in St Andrew.
Top of the class
Both these are government institutions, not private preparatory schools whose test scores tend to outstrip, by wide margins, those of public schools. For instance, while, nationally, 49 per cent of the nine- and 10-year-olds who do the grade four test mastered math, the rate in government primary schools was 43 per cent. The national figure was dragged up by the strong performance of under 5,000 preparatory school students who did the test.
It is within that context that Kensington and Half-Way Tree Primary schools are significant. They had mastery of 91 per cent and 83 per cent, respectively, in the grade four numeracy assessment, the highest among public schools with more than 20 children faced the markers. Two hundred and five sat the test at Kensington, while 184 did so at Half-Way Tree. The latter is a relatively long-standing school that is accustomed to success under principal Carol O'Connor-Clarke. Kensington is in its 16th year and has recently come into success.
As its principal, Carlene McCalla-Francis, told this newspaper, it used to be that "nobody in Greater Portmore wanted to attend the school".
Its performance was poor, it was run-down, and seemed on the way to becoming another failing school - before Mrs McCalla-Francis. When the area's parliamentary representative offered to mobilise the original builder to help with its refurbishing, Mrs McCalla-Francis opted instead for an industrial stove, with which she launched a food business for the students. The school then paid its way.
demanding results
But just as important, Mrs McCalla-Francis has high expectations for her students and believes that they, like her staff, must be held to account for performance. "I look at my students and tell them that I want 'A's."
Half-Way Tree Primary has long been proving that, as was again highlighted in its grade four scores and outlined by Lindel Hart, its grade four coordinator, in her article on Sunday on the school's approach to teaching math. "Mathematics must be fun-filled and at no given time should be presented as a bag of abstract ideas," she wrote.
And Mrs O'Connor-Clarke holds her staff, and parents, to account. The education ministry can learn things from these schools.
