In our 50th year of na­tion­al In­de­pen­dence, frag­ile as this might be con­sid­ered, there is much to cel­e­brate and ac­knowl­edge in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. There are some who think oth­er­wise as they con­sis­tent­ly ex­press a neg­a­tive view of the jour­ney since 1962.

They high­light all the flaws but fail to ac­knowl­edge that im­por­tant pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ments have oc­curred in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. Of course, some crit­ics are well in­ten­tioned and we make the dis­tinc­tion be­tween these peo­ple and those who crit­i­cise de­struc­tive­ly to make the point that we would have been bet­ter off un­der colo­nial rule.

As we ap­proach the an­niver­sary date, it is well to as­sure our­selves and af­firm that as a na­tion we have made sig­nif­i­cant steps for­ward in many ar­eas of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, al­though the pace has been painful­ly slow.

There should be lit­tle or no dis­agree­ment that the for­ma­tion of the Ja­maica Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion, the largest pro­fes­sion­al body in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean, short­ly af­ter we gained In­de­pen­dence, was a pos­i­tive and re­mark­able de­vel­op­ment.

Dis­parate teacher groups came to­geth­er to com­bine ef­forts to im­prove the qual­i­ty of ed­u­ca­tion and to broad­en ac­cess through ad­vo­ca­cy and per­sua­sion. The uni­ty of ef­fort and stead­fast­ness of the body in de­mand­ing mean­ing­ful pol­i­cy changes have re­sult­ed in many sig­nif­i­cant poli­cies and pro­grammes be­ing im­ple­ment­ed.

With­out this Ja­maican or­gan­i­sa­tion many of the things we take for grant­ed would nev­er have been achieved. The 1966 New Deal in Ed­u­ca­tion, a pol­i­cy state­ment and a pro­gramme to ex­tend sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion (Grades Sev­en to Nine), es­tab­lished a mile­stone in our ed­u­ca­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

The ar­chi­tect, the late Ed­win Allen, put a vi­sion in­to re­al­i­ty in ex­tend­ing ac­cess to sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion al­beit at the low­er lev­el. The Ju­nior Sec­ondary School, an up­grade and ex­pan­sion of the "se­nior school" was es­tab­lished. Some 50 new schools or so were built.

The cur­ricu­lum for the 12-15 age co­hort was sig­nif­i­cant­ly ex­pand­ed and im­proved in qual­i­ty. In ret­ro­spect, it was not on­ly a new deal but a bet­ter deal for thou­sands of stu­dents. Es­sen­tial­ly, these schools pro­vid­ed the ba­sis for the next ma­jor ex­pan­sion of ac­cess to sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion.

An un­prece­dent­ed flur­ry of ac­tiv­i­ties and ini­tia­tives in ed­u­ca­tion, spear­head­ed by the late vi­sion­ary Michael Man­ley, took place be­tween 1973 and 1975. The ad­min­is­tra­tive struc­ture of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion was rad­i­cal­ly re­or­gan­ised and mod­ernised with the es­tab­lish­ment of the plan­ning, core cur­ricu­lum, ?re­search - eval­u­a­tion - coun­selling and tech­ni­cal/vo­ca­tion­al units, among oth­ers.

An in-ser­vice teacher ed­u­ca­tion thrust where un­trained teach­ers were trained on the job and sub­se­quent­ly cer­ti­fied as trained, the es­tab­lish­ment of the first set of re­gion­al ed­u­ca­tion bod­ies, and the de­ploy­ment of youth ser­vice teacher aides in schools were among in­no­va­tions in­tro­duced.

Stu­dents in the ju­nior sec­ondary schools were giv­en an ex­ten­sion of two more years of sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion. A height­ened sig­nif­i­cance was giv­en to vo­ca­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion and this co­in­cid­ed with the es­tab­lish­ment of the "new sec­ondary schools". The "New Thrust in Ed­u­ca­tion" ini­ti­at­ed was a bold de­vel­op­men­tal pol­i­cy put in ac­tion then.

There was an­oth­er mile­stone in 1988 when the re­clas­si­fi­ca­tion of new sec­ondary schools to high schools be­gan. The process of uni­fy­ing a dis­parate sec­ondary school sys­tem had be­gun in earnest. The epochal process was in­ten­si­fied and brought to a suc­cess­ful cul­mi­na­tion by the end of the 1990s.

The jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of the ini­tia­tive is just on­ly now be­ing re­alised with many of the new­er es­tab­lished high schools do­ing as well as the longer es­tab­lished ones, whether in aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance or in sports. The late 1980s al­so saw plans de­vel­oped for a de­cen­tralised sys­tem as well as a na­tion­al as­sess­ment pro­gramme.

The ex­e­cu­tion of the plans dur­ing the 1990s has brought us to the place where we have a fair­ly de­cen­tralised sys­tem in place and where we are in a po­si­tion to track the per­for­mance of our schools through the sup­ply of as­sess­ment da­ta. Re­mark­ably enough, some peo­ple have ex­ploit­ed this sit­u­a­tion as they use the da­ta pro­duced and re­port­ed to heap harsh and of­ten un­fair judge­ments on some schools with­out tak­ing in­to ac­count many of the ex­ter­nal dif­fi­cul­ties out­side the schools' con­trol.

Oth­er no­table im­prove­ments since 1962 can al­so be cit­ed, but space does not al­low. The full slate of cel­e­bra­to­ry events of our 50th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence is yet to be re­vealed. If an ed­u­ca­tion ex­po is not in the mix, I would urge that it be con­sid­ered for in­clu­sion and mount­ed even to­wards the end of the year.

The first and on­ly one in the 1990s was a great suc­cess and mo­ti­vat­ing force. An­oth­er one in 2012 would pro­vide a fil­lip for the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem as achieve­ments are high­light­ed and a new thrust in ear­ly child­hood ed­u­ca­tion is launched. The in­vest­ment will pay div­i­dends.