Ruthlyn James | Alternate pathways or hidden streaming?

In recent years, Jamaica has promoted the Alternate Pathways to Secondary Education (APSE) as a reform designed to meet the diverse learning needs of students. The idea sounds progressive: rather than a one-size-fits-all curriculum, students are placed on Pathway I, II, or III based on their Primary Exit Profile (PEP) results and learning profile.

In theory, each pathway is tailored to readiness, interest, and support needs. In practice, however, APSE has revived uncomfortable questions about streaming, equity, and fairness in how we judge children and schools.

Pathway I is for students who demonstrate mastery of the National Standards Curriculum at the end of primary school. These students are considered “ready” for the traditional secondary curriculum, typically leading to CSEC, CAPE, and higher education.

Pathway II serves students who show gaps in mastery, but display potential to benefit from targeted interventions. They are expected to receive remedial support, smaller class sizes, and differentiated instruction, with many still sitting CSEC examinations after five years.

Pathway III is for students with more profound learning challenges or diagnosed special educational needs. The emphasis here is supposed to be functional academics, vocational training, and life skills, with some students moving toward occupational certification rather than a full CSEC load.

On paper, this is not streaming. It is meant to be a flexible, needs-based system where students can move between pathways as they grow. But in reality, the old problem of segregation by ability and circumstance has quietly resurfaced. The placement system means children on Pathway I are far more likely to enter traditional high-performing schools such as Campion College, Immaculate Conception, Ardenne, and Wolmer’, institutions with strong reputations, alumni networks, and ample resources.

By contrast, students on Pathway II and III are overwhelmingly placed in non-traditional or “upgraded” high schools such as Robert Lightbourne, Seaforth, Tacky, or Oracabessa, where resources are scarce and the student population includes higher proportions of learners with learning disabilities, intellectual challenges, or serious socio-economic barriers.

CONTRADICTION

Here lies the contradiction: at the end of five years, students from both sets of schools are judged by the same Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations. A student at Campion and a student at Robert Lightbourne are compared on one scale, even though their starting points, class sizes, teacher ratios, access to specialists, and family supports are vastly different.

Yet, the public ranking of schools through Educate Jamaica’s High School Performance Index (HSPI) continues to measure success solely by the percentage of students achieving five or more CSEC subjects, including English and mathematics.

In the 2024 HSPI ranking, Campion College once again topped the list with 100 per cent of its students meeting the benchmark. But schools serving large numbers of Pathway II and III students, including Robert Lightbourne High, did not even appear in the list of the top-23 schools nationally.

Their absence speaks volumes. It is not that these schools are failing; it is that the system measures them by an exam they were never resourced to prepare for. The result is statistical invisibility; an entire category of schools and children erased from public recognition because the metrics were never built to see them.

From a developmental standpoint, this approach misses a fundamental truth; children are not failures, systems are. Specific learning disabilities do not mean low intelligence.

Intellectual disabilities do not erase the capacity for growth, dignity, or contribution. Yet too often, Pathway II and III students are treated as though they are doomed to underperform, and the schools they attend are publicly ranked against those with completely different populations.

This fuels a vicious cycle. Students internalise labels of “slow” or “less than”. Parents lose faith in their assigned schools. Teachers, facing overcrowded classrooms and limited special-education training, burn out. The result is two parallel education systems: one for the privileged few, and one for the struggling many, both judged by the same exam and publicly compared as though they started on equal footing.

HURT AND FRUSTRATION

A dean of discipline at one such school recently shared her hurt and frustration. In her parish, she said, many primary-school teachers use her school’s name as a form of negative reinforcement, warning students, “If you don’t work hard or study, you’ll end up at that high school.”

The comment stings deeply. “We are not a dumping ground,” she said. “We have bright, promising children here. Many of them are capable, talented, and determined to rise, but society has already branded them as failures before they even get a chance.”

Her voice captures the pain of many educators who work tirelessly in schools that carry the heavy weight of stigma; places that are vital to inclusion, yet are mocked for serving the very children the system claims to support.

We must ask plainly: are we truly an equitable nation if we judge Campion and Robert Lightbourne by the same yardstick? Equity does not mean sameness; it means fairness. It means giving each child what they need to succeed, not demanding identical outcomes from unequal circumstances. APSE still holds promise. The idea of differentiated pathways is not the problem. The problem is pathways without equity; flexibility on paper but rigidity in practice.

If the Ministry of Education and Youth truly intends APSE to fulfil its purpose, it must ensure that schools with large numbers of Pathway II and III students are resourced with smaller classes, trained special educators, and access to psychologists, speech-language therapists, and intervention specialists.

Public rankings must shift from raw CSEC scores to value-added growth that celebrates measurable improvement in learning and behaviour, not just exam outcomes. Functional and vocational education must be funded, structured, and dignified, not treated as a consolation route.

Any accommodations approved for PEP must automatically follow the child into secondary school without disruption or delay. Data on placement and outcomes by pathway must be made public not to shame schools, but to drive resource allocation and national planning.

The truth is simple: schools like Campion and Robert Lightbourne should never be ranked side by side without context. One carries the privileges of Pathway I. The other bears the unacknowledged weight of Pathway II and III. Judging them by the same league table is not accountability; it is injustice.

The true measure of Jamaica’s education system will not be found in how well our top schools perform, but in how our system uplifts those walking the harder pathways; the children with learning disabilities, those from rural or inner-city schools, and those whose names never appear on the ranking sheets. Until the metrics change, APSE risks becoming not a bridge, but a wall. And unless we redefine what success means, we will continue to rank our inequities, not our progress.

Ruthlyn James is the founding director of Adonijah Group of Schools Therapy and Assessment Centre. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com