New Secondary Schools in Jamaica Set Up To Fail

The educational system in Jamaica creates a dividing environment that has throughout the years set up the new secondary schools to fail. These schools have been established since the 1940s, and at that time,  were known then as senior schools. Subsequent name changes were made for them to be called: junior secondary schools, new secondary schools, and eventually high schools. While the Ministry of Education plays with the name changes, it slyly diverts from the main issue by making no effort to balance the new secondary schools' enrollment with high achiever that normally gravitate to the traditional high schools. Throughout the years, these new secondary schools have developed a stigma that has left a negative, lasting impression on those young primary school and prep school children and their parents who will not consider those new secondary schools as suitable institutions to attend when asked to make the preferred high school choices. So, of course, the traditional high schools that have made a name for themselves over the years have continued to be considered as first choices to attend versus the new secondary schools. Therefore, the Ministry of Education, while under both the PNP and JLP leaderships, have continued to maintain the divisive practice that permits the brightest students to gravitate to certain traditional schools which, of course, will always produce many students who excel academically. On the other hand, the governments' intentional oversight or convenient silence of the need to balance students enrollment in all secondary schools based on students' varied learning abilities mean that the nation will continue with the age-old problem of segregating students from each other on their academic capabilities. This system has been ingrained in the mentality of Jamaicans since the British colonial era. So, the problem does not stop with the secondary schools, as it continues to adulthood in a country that promotes classism. Undoing a poor educational system that has been in place over decades would be a challenge especially since it may be met with objections from those stakeholders who will do all that is possible to maintain the backward colonial policies that divide students based on their academic abilities. An education system that relegates some students to succeed and others to fail does not benefit a country's development.

Education System Fosters Majority Failing Underclass