Francis: More help for State-school students

State-school students won just 17 scholarships, compared to 372 awards won by denominational schools, revealed Education Minister Anthony Garcia, on Thursday announcing the President’s Medal winners, even though more students attend the former.

Francis, speaking to Sunday Newsday on Friday at the Lower House, observed a boost in students’ literacy and numeracy and in the aesthetics of schools will result from the Government’s School Improvement Programme, popularly known as the “Laventille Project”.

“It will look at parenting.

All the research shows that successful students succeed basically because their parents are directly involved in their education.

At some of the schools where we don’t have high achievement, that parental involvement is not as acute. So we are trying to actually bridge that gap, by using that project.” He said once that project is used in Laventille, it will be tweaked and rolled out elsewhere where students are under- performing.

“We realise that at school level, leadership is very important, in terms of having a board and having a principal who can manage the school.” He said some schools lack these. “So we are really trying to bolster the leadership at the school level by giving them a framework to manage their school and manage all of the tangibles and intangibles that make up a school.” Francis also spoke of remedial work for very low-performing students.

“Many government schools get students who get below 30 percent in the SE A (Secondary Entrance Assessment) Exam. This year we had 3,500 such students.” He said this is too many students scoring less than 30 percent in English and/or Math, out of the 18,000 students who wrote the exam.

“It’s far too large, so we’re going to do a ‘tracer’ where we’re going to make an intervention, targeting them for literacy and numeracy but also following them through their progression through school,” Francis said.

“One of the things we’ve noticed at the primary level is that students who do poorly at Standard One are the same students who also do poorly at the SE A Exam (in Standard 5).

There’s a direct correlation.

“So I’m thinking that if they enter Form 1 at secondary school and we can make an intervention at Form 1 in terms of literacy and numeracy and we can trace them, then we can look at their development and ensure that they don’t just ‘pass through’ school without having made an improvement in these critical areas (literacy and numeracy). If you can read and count that is a platform for learning and development, but if you can’t read your secondary schooling is really lost on you” Sunday Newsday recalled former education minister, Hazel Manning, saying students scoring below 30 percent at the SE A Exam should not advance to secondary school.

Francis replied, “If you really think about it being in primary school or in secondary school doesn’t change their ‘state’. You need to deal with not where they are but the state they are in. If we could address that at secondary level, if we could bring in specialists to help with the literacy and numeracy, then education becomes meaningful.

“Leaving them at the primary level humiliates them. So there’s a psychological aspect to it, so one has to be careful that in trying to help, you don’t do more harm.” Francis said some students are misdiagnosed, when in fact they have physiological problems such as sight and hearing, which are not detected by their schools. He said the Ministry will bolster the staffing of Student Support Services (SSS), to assist in this, although a big philosophical change is also needed.

“We can get them to be more interventionist as opposed to reactionist,” Francis said of the SSS. “At this point they wait until something ‘happens’ and then they go and assess, ‘maybe this child has problems because of X’, but if we could get them (SSS) to work with the School Supervision Division and get them to work with the student before it reaches that position, then they’ll make something meaningful.” He also said teachers must be aware of the “hidden curriculum” whereby they can influence students outside of the formally-delivery syllabus.

Told there is much to be done, Francis said, “You can be overwhelmed by looking at the magnitude of work, but I have a simple philosophy.

If you eat a whole loaf of bread, one slice at a time, you’ll finish the bread. So we’ll try to tackle this one slice at a time.” Saying he has had concerns about the performance of State schools including as reflected by their share of scholarships recently, he said if they can be given more resources it becomes a more level playing field in education.

“A strong principal makes the world of difference, especially if a principal can bridge that gap in terms of getting the parents and the community involved.” “We are re-instituting the school boards.

The issue is that in the government schools the school boards don’t have authority. So we are looking at that framework to see if we could improve it, to have some teeth so they can make an impact on the school.” Francis concluded, “Fixing education is like juggling ten balls at the same time, but it has to be done.”