Editorial | Demographics and schools

According to Dr Dana Morris Dixon, Jamaica’s education minister, she has not yet taken a decision on the future of Mulgrave Primary School in the southwestern parish of St Elizabeth.

That might suggest that Dr Morris Dixon could keep the school open, which would merely delay the inevitable. Ultimately, Mulgrave Primary, along with many other schools across Jamaica, will have to close.

The challenge for Dr Morris Dixon, her technocrats at the education ministry, and Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness is to change the narrative around institutions like Mulgrave and frame it as a national conversation about demographics, economics and the efficient allocation of state resources. Nobody is vindictively intent on shuttering schools.

Mulgrave was one of scores of schools badly damaged by Hurricane Melissa, the Category 5 storm that devastated western Jamaica last October. It is no secret that the education ministry is seriously considering its permanent closure and transferring its students to Merrywood Primary, seven miles away.

Understandably, parents, residents and other stakeholders in the rural community do not like the idea, as demonstrated in a recent protest. The fact, however, is that there is a compelling case for closing Mulgrave.

It is estimated that it will cost J$65 million to properly repair the school. That would not be the most rational use of taxpayers’ money, given Mulgrave’s small and declining enrollment of 73 students. It is one of scores of primary schools across Jamaica with fewer than 100 students, some of which have enrollments in the low double digits. Yet, entire school plants continue to be maintained rather than rationalised to achieve efficiencies through economies of scale.

logic of consolidation

Hurricane Melissa is providing Minister Morris Dixon with an opportunity to tackle part of the problem. Hopefully, the government will also soon pivot to the larger and more fundamental issues of demographics, economics and poverty, which is sometimes the unspoken factor behind opposition to school rationalisation. Parents worry that they will not be able to afford transportation for their children to attend schools outside their immediate communities or provide meals when they are away from home.

Apparently, there are up to 10 schools in the Melissa-affected parishes that education officials believe would be more efficient not to reopen. Their repair costs are substantial, and there is potentially greater value in allocating those funds to larger institutions serving more students.

“We have to look at whether or not it makes sense to consolidate some of the schools,” Dr Morris Dixon said last week in response to the Mulgrave protest.

The logic of consolidation is unimpeachable and extends beyond a handful of schools in western and southwestern Jamaica, as this newspaper believes Dr Morris Dixon’s internal reports indicate. Nor is she the first education minister to confront this challenge. Eleven years ago, Ronald Thwaites, one of her predecessors, highlighted the scale of the problem in an address to school principals.

“... We have 830 primary schools in Jamaica, and 220 of those have fewer than 100 students, yet they are fully staffed with teachers,” Rev Thwaites said. “The cost of providing primary education in those schools is roughly five to 10 times higher than in larger schools.”

He added: “If you have limited resources, you have to spend them efficiently. If those small schools across Jamaica, despite their higher costs, were uniformly performing well, we would absorb the expense somehow. But, unfortunately, they are not performing very well and, in many cases, despite student-teacher ratios of one to three, one to six, or one to 13, the results are not good.”

demographic shift

Despite some school closures over the past decade, the situation has likely worsened, including the economic return taxpayers receive on their investment, as measured by educational outcomes in schools with exceptionally low student-teacher ratios.

While the quality of education can be improved through targeted interventions, the factors causing some schools to decline because of insufficient student populations have no simple solutions. These struggling schools are the product of Jamaica’s demographic realities.

In recent years, Jamaica’s population has generally trended from stagnation towards marginal decline, a trajectory that is likely to continue. The result is an increasingly ageing population.

Another notable demographic shift is that Jamaicans are increasingly living in urban areas rather than rural communities such as Mulgrave.

For instance, during the 11 years between the island’s 2011 and 2022 censuses, Jamaica’s population increased by 76,555 people, representing an average annual growth rate of 0.24 per cent. Between 1972 and 1982, the average annual growth rate, based on census data, was 1.4 per cent. The trend has been declining ever since.

In 1970, women of child-bearing age had an average of 5.47 children. Today, that figure is 1.9, down from 2.4 in 2008 and below the 2.1 children per woman that demographers say is necessary to maintain a stable population. In 1960, 41 per cent of the population was under age 15, the years during which children attend school. Today, that proportion is roughly half. Within 25 years, Jamaica is expected to have more people over age 65 than children. Additionally, in 2022, 60 per cent of Jamaicans lived in urban communities, up 10 percentage points from a decade earlier.

These demographic trends will shape how and where schools are built in the future. That is the conversation the country should be having.