Educator calls for equity in placement of students who sit PEP

 

A Manchester-based educator is calling for greater equity in the placement of students transitioning to secondary schools through the Primary Exit Profile (PEP) examination. 

 

Jasford Gabriel, Principal of Manchester High School, made the call while speaking at a World Peace Day civic ceremony in Mandeville, Manchester on Monday.

 

Speaking under the theme Advancing Peace Through Education and Justice, Mr. Gabriel said the current PEP placement system does not fairly distribute students across secondary schools. He noted that this often leaves some educators to manage more students with maladaptive behaviours than others. 

 

"And so it takes so much time from the schedule of the administrators and the teachers and everybody just to be treating with the whole matter of attitudes and discipline and so on. And so one of the things we need to do is to try to get

more equity, I think, in the placement of students across the education system, so every school gets a share of the challenges and can plan to cope with these challenges instead of being overrun by the challenges that are existing at those levels. 

 

"And so you find that because it's only 30 per cent of the number of schools that are traditional high schools, we then have a huge problem with schools that are non-traditional and wrestling with disciplinary issues, academic performance," he pointed out.

 

Highlighting the inequity in treatment of some students at differing high schools, Mr. Gabriel cited the case of a parent who prioritised one child's education over the other simply because of the type of school each child attended. 

 

He argued that such disparity can feel unfair and unjust to the child receiving less attention and support. 

 

"The parent has a child at a school that is a non-traditional high school - I'm not going to call the name cause I don't like the stigmatisation - and one at Manchester High. The parent does not even pay the fee for the other child. The parent does not even go to the PTA meeting. But the child at Manchester High School gets priority treatment. Fees are paid, they are at the meetings, they follow up with the teachers, you know. And so it becomes very challenging because there are a number of other children in the system like the one that is not getting the attention that he or she deserves," he complained.

 

Last month, Professor Canute Thompson, a senior academic at the University of the West Indies, called for the abolition of the PEP examination, saying it is undermining student confidence and failing to reflect the diverse realities of the Jamaican school system.