ETOC pushing to overhaul governance framework for public schools

 

Chairman of the Education Transformation Oversight Committee, Dr. Adrian Stokes, says the committee will be moving speedily to overhaul the governance framework for public schools. 

 

The committee is implementing recommendations from the Jamaica Education Transformation Commission's assessment of the education sector. 

 

In a critical assessment of the current governance framework for schools, Dr. Stokes said some executive leaders have been working hard to transform the outcome for students while others are ill-suited for their jobs. 

 

Addressing a recent media briefing, the ETOC chair shared observations made at schools struggling in key subject areas of mathematics and English language. 

 

"I do these visits to get a better understanding of the school environment, assess the quality of the executive leadership, and also to assess the quality of the boards, and generally to assess if there's a well-thought-out plan to get these schools back on track. From my observations, we have some high-quality people in our education system, for sure. They just lack support in key areas that are critical to success. But we also have some very weak persons who are, quite frankly, a bad fit for the job they are supposed to do," he admitted. 

 

He added that some boards are not effective in playing their governance role.

 

"This stems from structural issues in terms of voting rights on the board, to the board not having an appropriate blend of competencies needed for the particular school. These are issues we will have to deal with in the transformation process that is under way."  

 

In the meantime, Dr. Stokes said safeguards are needed to have all boards independent from the schools for which they are responsible. He said this is not currently the case in Jamaica.

 

"A school can't govern itself. People from the school can't be governing themselves. It just doesn't make sense. In Jamaica, we have effectively decentralised our school governance system to boards that have the responsibility to hire and performance manage principals and teachers. However, the composition of the boards for government-run institutions, including who has voting power, can produce outcomes that are not in keeping with proper governance. In effect, a government-run school can have a board that is effectively run by persons from the school, producing the perverse results of persons from the school holding themselves accountable," he reasoned.