In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Paul Richards has com­mend­ed Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert for con­fronting the “text­book car­tel” to seek stan­dard­i­s­a­tion of text­books—but Richards has al­so called for at­ten­tion to the “red flags” in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem that trans­late in­to dropouts and per­sons en­ter­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

“If you don’t in­ter­vene in the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor, you’ll have to in­ter­vene in the po­lice sta­tion,” Richards said in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day dur­ing Sen­ate de­bate on the 2024 Bud­get.

He com­mend­ed Gov­ern­ment’s plan, “... to deal with what I de­scribe as the text­book car­tel—be­cause it’s a car­tel ... where books—one para­graph is changed in a book and the school re­quires the book to be up­dat­ed”.

“So, there’s no pass­ing down of the book to sib­lings, friends, fam­i­ly or peo­ple you don’t know, but you want to con­tribute to their ed­u­ca­tion. That book is now null and void and mon­ey was paid for it, but you have to pay for a new book,” Richards said.

“Every prin­ci­pal in a par­tic­u­lar dis­ci­pline can choose a dif­fer­ent text­book. That makes no sense to me in what is sup­posed to be a stan­dard­ised ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. That’s al­so part of the car­tel be­cause you could make sev­en text­books for the same sub­ject and make plen­ty mon­ey and there’s no pass­ing down of the book or shar­ing of the ma­te­r­i­al which still has val­ue—that needs to be bro­ken up.”

Richards al­so com­mend­ed Im­bert’s an­nounce­ment of the $1,000 grant to help stu­dents, since he said one of the ma­jor con­trib­u­tors to stu­dent un­der­per­for­mance and dropout is pover­ty.

Richards, not­ing Gov­ern­ment had spent $80 bil­lion on the ed­u­ca­tion/train­ing sec­tor be­tween 2015 to 2024, asked, “Is this sub­stan­tial in­vest­ment pro­duc­ing the types of cit­i­zens we want? Has it iden­ti­fied at-risk youth and in­ter­vened ef­fec­tive­ly be­fore they cross paths with the many el­e­ments of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem? Is it pro­duc­ing cit­i­zens who can com­pete glob­al­ly or pro­duc­ing kind, car­ing, com­pas­sion­ate cit­i­zens?”

Richards dis­agreed with the sug­ges­tion that the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor is in sham­bles.

“But we can­not con­tin­ue to ig­nore the glar­ing ex­am­ples and red flags of un­der­per­for­mance at the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) lev­el, which trans­lates to un­der­per­for­mance at sec­ondary lev­el and dropout which trans­lates, in many in­stances, in­to in­cur­sions in­to the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem,” Richards said.

“There are se­ri­ous crit­i­cal gaps that aren’t be­ing ad­dressed ef­fec­tive­ly or as fast as they need to be ad­dressed, giv­en the clear con­se­quences of these gaps on the wider so­ci­ety.”

He added, “Among these are SEA un­der­per­for­mance and school dropouts, which I be­lieve is a time bomb that isn’t tick­ing any­more but has ex­plod­ed on­to the streets and man­i­fest­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly in crime, pover­ty and home­less­ness. There’s al­so the se­ri­ous dere­lic­tion of du­ty to the dis­abil­i­ty com­mu­ni­ty and stu­dents with spe­cial needs in and out of the school sys­tem.”

Cit­ing re­ports, Richards said da­ta from the SEA ex­am­i­na­tion from 2010 to the present and even be­fore, re­veal a con­sis­tent and trou­bling per­cent­age of stu­dents who do not achieve 50 per cent or more.

Richards in­di­cat­ed the is­sue isn’t SEA, “but a sys­tem that is fail­ing to ef­fec­tive­ly re­me­di­ate stu­dents who are doc­u­ment­ed to be un­der­per­form­ing in Stan­dard One, Two, Three, Four and con­se­quent­ly Five and at SEA lev­el…”

“In any civilised coun­try, we can say with 50 fail­ing to pass, it’s the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem that’s fail­ing the stu­dents. Then you com­pound the sit­u­a­tion by mov­ing stu­dents who score 30 or 40 per cent in­to new cur­ric­u­lar in sec­ondary school and ex­pect them to per­form mir­a­cles—com­plete and ut­ter mad­ness!”

He said when stu­dents are told they’re a fail­ure in SEA or can’t cope with Form One, and are told they’re fail­ures through­out oth­er forms and they fail the CSEC, they’d turn away from so­ci­ety in­to the arms of gang lead­ers. “That’s what’s hap­pen­ing.”

Not­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s state­ment on the need for ad­just­ing laws, Richards said it’s not on­ly laws that need to evolve.

“We need to in­ter­vene be­fore the crim­i­nal­i­ty takes room, through a more re­spon­sive ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.”