?Last week the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is­sued a state­ment in­form­ing the pub­lic of a pi­lot study where­by co-ed (for­mer ju­nior and se­nior sec­ondary) schools are to be con­vert­ed to sin­gle-sex ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions. I must say, as a post­grad­u­ate stu­dent in the field of ed­u­ca­tion, I was quite dis­turbed by this new prospect.

Once again, it is ap­par­ent the min­istry has come to its own crass con­clu­sions that the rea­son the "pres­tige" schools are ex­celling aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly is be­cause these schools cater to one sex. I ab­solute­ly dis­agree with such vul­gar pos­tu­la­tions and I would love if the min­istry could pub­lish lo­cal ev­i­dence and re­search to sup­port these claims. You can­not have such dras­tic changes sim­ply based on the per­for­mance of two sin­gle-sex gov­ern­ment-run schools. These two schools have ex­celled be­cause stu­dents who per­form ex­cep­tion­al­ly well at the SEA at­tend these schools, thus putting them in the cat­e­go­ry of "pres­tige" schools in the coun­try. And even if there is in­ter­na­tion­al ev­i­dence to sug­gest that the re­sults would be pos­i­tive, our sit­u­a­tion is unique since these "for­mer ju­nior sec­ondary" schools are placed at the bot­tom of the hi­er­ar­chi­cal struc­ture of sec­ondary schools in the coun­try, thus ce­ment­ing their fate. The ob­vi­ous rea­son, which the min­istry ei­ther keeps miss­ing or con­ve­nient­ly ig­nores, is the na­tion­wide stream­ing called Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment. It is quite ev­i­dent that there is a con­cen­tra­tion of low­er aca­d­e­m­ic achiev­ers, many of which are mem­bers of the low­er so­cio-eco­nom­ic brack­ets, at these for­mer ju­nior sec­ondary schools. This hasn't changed!

You would not see a child who has achieved 90 per cent at the SEA at­tend­ing one of these schools, nor would you see a for­mer ju­nior sec­ondary school as a first choice. Why is this so? There­fore, you can­not ex­pect that by mak­ing these schools sin­gle-sex in­sti­tutes that it will have any sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on their lev­els of aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment. If the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion (Es­ther Le Gen­dre) re­al­ly wants to make a dif­fer­ence, she must have a mix of high­er and low­er achiev­ers from the SEA at­tend­ing these for­mer ju­nior and se­nior sec­ondary schools, there­by re­mov­ing this im­age of a "good" school and a "bad" school. You can­not change the mind­set and cul­ture of a school by sim­ply chang­ing its name. I am per­son­al­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ing the for­mer ju­nior sec­ondary schools for my the­sis (M Phil in so­ci­ol­o­gy with fo­cus in ed­u­ca­tion) and I have vis­it­ed six of the 20 schools card­ed for con­ver­sion, dur­ing my re­search. I can as­sure you that gen­der is not the main is­sue with re­gard to aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance of these stu­dents. These stu­dents have it much hard­er due to their so­cio-eco­nom­ic po­si­tion in so­ci­ety, rudi­men­ta­ry lit­er­a­cy and nu­mer­a­cy skills, and deal­ing with the pub­lic's neg­a­tive per­cep­tion and stig­ma at­tached to these schools.

These are the chil­dren the min­istry should fo­cus on help­ing! Many of these teach­ers must be ap­plaud­ed for what they have to deal with and the in­no­v­a­tive ways they must ini­ti­ate dai­ly to grasp the at­ten­tion of these stu­dents in or­der to make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence in their lives. You hear time and time again that the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem has failed the ma­jor­i­ty of the pop­u­lace. The high lev­els of crime, delin­quen­cy and the mind­set of the peo­ple are tan­ta­mount to this. There is def­i­nite­ly a dis­con­nect in this coun­try be­tween re­search and pol­i­cy mak­ing since it is quite clear that poli­cies are cre­at­ed and im­ple­ment­ed in an ad-hoc man­ner, leav­ing much to be de­sired.

The min­istry needs to work hand in hand with re­searchers and the rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers to un­der­stand what is re­al­ly go­ing on in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem if it tru­ly wants to have any pos­i­tive im­pact in these chil­dren's lives. If the min­istry goes full steam ahead with this project and does not make the nec­es­sary amend­ments, there is not go­ing to be any sig­nif­i­cant change in the aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance of these stu­dents and in this case it's go­ing to re­sult in the same dif­fer­ence.

?Sara Chookolin­go

UWI, St Au­gus­tine