ASTEP review underway

[Lazie]

BY LUKE DOUGLAS Career and Education senior reporter douglasl@jamaicaobserver.com
Sunday, November 04, 2012

THE Alternative Secondary Transition Education Programme (ASTEP) -- a remedial education programme introduced under the previous Government, is currently being reviewed by the Ministry of Education to determine whether it is achieving its objectives and delivering value for money.

This was revealed last week by Education Minister Reverend Ronald Thwaites, who also acknowledged that the programme has not been given the resources it was initially promised.
THWAITES... we haven’t been in a position since January to fulfill all those requirements



THWAITES... we haven’t been in a position since January to fulfill all those requirements


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"We are reviewing the ASTEP to ascertain whether it is fulfilling the purposes for which is was designed and whether it is the most cost-effective method of dealing with remedial work at that stage," Thwaites told Career and Education last Thursday.
He said he would have a clearer view of what was the likely future of the programme by the end of the school year.
ASTEP — conceptualised during Opposition Leader Andrew Holness's stint as minister of education between 2007 and 2011 — is a remedial programme for students who completed their years at the primary level of the education system without achieving mastery of the Grade Four Literacy Test (GFLT).
In March 2011, some 6,000 in exactly this predicament were barred from sitting the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) in a controversial move by the education ministry. Most of these students became the first cohort of students in ASTEP.
The programme commenced in September last year, with 251 centres in 191 schools, to a resounding welcome from parents who were at their wits' end about the academic future of their underperforming children.
Former permanent secretary in the ministry, Audrey Sewell, promised months prior to the programme launch that these children would be continuously assessed and at the end of their first year, those who mastered the programme would be placed in regular high school programmes.
"Even after the two-year programme, those who are still not ready, we will look at their special needs even more closely... we would, by then, recognise that they have special special needs," said Sewell then.
She said those children would be referred to special education institutions or placed in a vocational education programme similar to the Career Advancement Programme (CAP), which was intended to ensure all school leavers are literate and numerate and have vocational or technical qualifications.
Each ASTEP centre was supposed to have no more than 25 students who were to be given access to computers, literacy and numeracy specialists, guidance counsellors, psychological assessment, and other human and physical resources to aid their academic performance.
However, ASTEP has not been without its challenges.
In September, 32 guidance counsellors employed to the programme were axed, only to be re-employed in what the education ministry described as a communication mix-up.
Also, some principals have complained of not receiving the computers, specialist teachers and other resources promised for ASTEP.
Thwaites, meanwhile, admitted that ASTEP had been affected by resource constraints.
"It is to be acknowledged that not all the equipment promised apparently was delivered, some before my time. We haven't been in a position, since January, to fulfill all those requirements", he said.
The minister said his senior advisor, Radley Reid, had been compiling the list of programme requirements that have not been fulfilled with a view to seeing whether they can be financed in the next budget year.
But he made it clear that the programme would not be affected by budget changes brought on by the need to repair schools damaged by Hurricane Sandy.
"We certainly will not be cutting back on a programme like ASTEP to fund repairs," Thwaites told The Observer.
The debate about the future of ASTEP took on a political flavour in June with Opposition spokesperson on education Marisa Dalrymple-Philibert warning that any political disassembly of the programme would be stoutly resisted.



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[Lazie]

Thoughts for the ASTEP review

We take note of the announcement by Education Minister Rev Ronald Thwaites that the Alternative Secondary Transition Education Programme (ASTEP) is being reviewed.
The minister wants to be sure that the remedial programme targeting children in the 12-14 age bracket is achieving its objectives and delivering value for money.
Readers will recall that the programme, initiated by the previous Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Government under the leadership of then Education Minister Mr Andrew Holness, was triggered by the unacceptably high number of functional illiterates entering high schools annually.
The situation was so bad that in 2011 when ASTEP started, thousands of children entered the programme -- having been barred from sitting the high school entrance exam, Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT), because they were below the minimum levels of literacy and numeracy considered satisfactory for their age group.
How the Ministry of Education could have allowed the situation prior to ASTEP to have continued for so many years without far-reaching remedial action has not been satisfactorily explained, in our view.
In that respect, this newspaper was among those hailing the ASTEP when it was initiated, even while recognising that it could only be a stop-gap measure.
We say stop gap, because the even more fundamental question is why do so many of our children reach age 12 or grade six without being functionally literate.
A large part of the answer is to be found within the schools themselves -- often having to make do with overcrowded classrooms as well as demotivated or ill-suited teachers.
Very importantly, the underperformance of our children at all ages has to do with the inadequacy of resources. Mr Thwaites tells us, for example, that in the case of ASTEP, the resource shortage has been a huge drawback.
However, in contemplating not only the ASTEP, but our entire primary and secondary school system, we should also recognise that not all blame should be placed at the feet of schools or the Ministry of Education.
The truth is that illiteracy and ignorance go hand in hand with poverty. Many of our children falling below the required literacy and numeracy levels are from impoverished homes where parents and guardians are themselves, at best, only semi-literate. In such situations the importance of an education for the young ones can sometimes be perceived as only secondary, given the other daily demands -- economic and otherwise.
That explains why so many of our children go to school only two or three days per week. Which, as rural school principal Mrs Sheelyn Manya suggested in an interview with the Observer Central back in June, could explain why so many end up illiterate at age 12 and as a consequence in ASTEP.
Rev Thwaites, a sober and thoughtful man, and his team will have to consider all this and much more in their review of the ASTEP with the aim, we expect, to make it more efficient and cost-effective.We wish them well.

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