Editorial | Again, graduating from what?

After the crass, tone-deaf and emotionally inept action by the leadership of Ascot Primary School, the education ministry flubbed an opportunity to put to an end the ridiculous, and often expensive, spectacle of tots and pre-teens, wearing mortarboards and gowns, graduating from basic and primary schools.
Perhaps the ministry also missed another issue that was laid bare by the Ascot debacle: the folly of keeping children on conveyor belts, deposited from grade-to-grade, regardless of their inability to read, write or do sums appropriate to their age and grade levels.
Instead, the education minister, Dana Morris Dixon, waxed warm about the different learning differences of children, her stance on fairness and inclusion, and schools as nurturing environments.  
All of this is, of course, relevant. Except that Dr Morris Dixon and her chief education officer, Terry Ann Thomas-Gayle, failed to address the critical issue:  the messaging that transitioning from a kindergarten/basic school to a primary education institution, or from primary to high school, are monumental feats, worthy of being adorned as major academic achievements.  There are few other jurisdictions with this absurdity, without taking into account the burden that schools also place on parents to pay handsomely for these events - like the J$16,000 and J$26,000 Ascot Primary reportedly demanded for students’ participation in its exercise.
Ascot’s error, in the eyes of the parents, and, apparently, the education authorities, was neither graduation nor the cost of the event. Rather, it was the discriminatory approach of the school’s principal, Mark Jackson, and whoever else planned the event.  They should have been aware that it would have caused deep embarrassment to some students and their parents.
At Grade 6, the end of primary school, Jamaican students take a Primary Exit Profile (PEP) exam, which tests their proficiency in critical subjects. This exam is used to determine which high schools students attend. The better performers get to go to the elite, the top schools. 
BENCHMARK
In this year’s exam, released last week, 28 per cent and 31 per cent of students, respectively, did meet the benchmark for being “proficient” in language arts and Maths.  Apparently, Ascot, which is located in Portmore, decided to have a two-tiered ‘graduation’ ceremony for its students: mortarboards and gowns - the J$26,000 group - who were deemed ‘proficient’, and plain uniforms for the others. Those who didn’t make the proficiency standard would march behind the wearers of mortarboards and gowns.
In the education ministry’s statement on Sunday, Mr Jackson apologised for the mishandling of the event. However, that the terrible optics of such an exercise, and its potential psychological impact on children should have been lost on anyone in a position of leadership is unfathomable.  But, just as inexplicable is that these parodies of graduations have been allowed to stand, especially when considered against the backdrop that around a third of primary school students end Grade Six illiterate and fewer than a fifth of Jamaican secondary students who write the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) exams pass five subjects, including maths and English, in a single sitting.
ASKED 11 YEARS AGO
As this newspaper asked in these columns 11 years ago: “Graduating from what?”
The Gleaner said then: “The point is that graduation ceremonies ought to mark the successful completion of courses of study, in recognition of which ‘graduands’ are awarded certificates. We hardly consider going through kindergarten/basic or primary school occasions for graduations, at least not of the kind to be marked by formal and shamefully expensive ceremonies.”
The Editorial Board reaffirms that position, which many commentators have - especially on the question of costs - shared over the years. Indeed, in 2009, the then prime minister, Bruce Golding, on a visit to Freetown Primary School in Clarendon, lamented “an excessive culture of spending on graduation by schools in Jamaica”. He had promised reform.
A decade later, Aretha Willie, the principal of George Headley Primary School, complained about parents who were not seen during students’ school lives, turn up, having paid expensively for ‘graduation’ ceremonies
“Literally, I pray for the time when the Ministry of Education will put an end to this charade at the early-childhood and primary levels,” Ms Willie wrote in a letter published by The Gleaner.
Six years after Ms Willie’s intervention, The Gleaner’s Editorial Board urges  Minister Morris Dixon to act on her recommendation.