Editorial | Nonsense graduations

Apart from a whinge over the schools’ alleged exploitative pricing of the affairs, a more substantive contribution by Stewart Jacobs and his National Parent-Teacher Association of Jamaica (NPTAJ) would have been an explanation of their perspectives of the value of “graduations” from even earliest stages of the education system.
An example of this is one reported on by this newspaper on Saturday – the graduation class of 2026 at the Cromarty Grover Early Childhood Development Centre in St Catherine, where the commencement address was by an 11-year-old former student. 
One of the photographs accompanying the story is of a small group of seemingly bewildered small children decked in blue gowns, with yellow trim and broad ecclesiastically styled collars, or falling bands, for the girls. The boys sported yellow stoles. 
These children, captured with frightened or quizzical looks on their faces, had just been told by a precocious child to “celebrate your achievements” and to “dream big”.
In the exaggerated earnestness of the moment, no one apparently contemplated the absurdity of the event, much the same way that the public debate over the Ascot Primary School graduation affair continues to skirt one of the issue’s core questions: graduation from what.
The Ascot Primary matter erupted a little more a week ago, when it was revealed that the school in Portmore, St Catherine, had taken a two-tiered approach to its ‘graduation’ ceremony for its grade 6 students, the grade at which children transition from primary to secondary education.
What the school’s principal, Mark Jackson, and his staff did was to cause the students who met the ‘proficient’ standards in the Primary Exit Profile (PEP), which determines readiness for high school learning, to wear gowns and mortarboards and march at the front of the exiting grade 6 class. The parents of these students paid $26,000 for this privilege, and the costume.
The other students, those who didn’t meet the PEP ‘proficient’ benchmarks, walked in the rear. They didn’t wear gowns. Their families were charged $16,000 for their children’s participation in the events surrounding the ‘graduation’ exercises.
RIGHTLY OUTRAGED
Many people have been rightly outraged at what happened at Ascot, the imagery of the event and its potential psychological impact on the back-of-the-line students. The apology of Principal Jackson notwithstanding, it is still befuddling that in planning the affair, Mr Jackson and his teachers were oblivious to the humiliation likely to be felt by the differently dressed students, who were to bring up the rear.
As Education Minister Dana Morris Dixon said in response to the Ascot Primary matter: “Our schools must be places where children are encouraged to strive for excellence while knowing they are valued, respected and supported. No child should experience humiliation, exclusion or discrimination in an institution entrusted with nurturing their development.”
Neither Dr Morris Dixon nor most commentators on the Ascot fiasco addressed the premise of holding lavish graduating ceremonies for tots leaving early childhood centres and basic schools for primary schools; and 12 and 13-year-olds transitioning from primary to high schools.  Their attention has largely been on the long-standing complaints about the costs of these programmes. 
Mr Jacobs, the parent-teachers’ association president, doesn’t appear to be concerned about graduation ceremonies at this stage of children’s education, but the fact that some schools charge excessively and use the ceremonies as fund-raising projects. 
“Graduation is a privilege offered by school,” he said. “Let the child wear the school uniform ... and have the experience.”
COMIC THEATRE
Except that graduation from basic and primary school is more comic theatre than celebrations of completed processes, where the people in mortarboards and gowns are at the end, rather than at the start, of a significant journey. High school is a reasonably appropriate place to start such ceremonies.
Despite Minister Morris Dixon’s statement that “the secondary pathways recorded in the PEP reports are designed to inform the development of the learning plan for students, so they can improve their learning journey”, graduation from basic and primary school glosses over critical failures in Jamaica’s education system. 
Based on the PEP assessments, each year approximately three in 10 students complete primary education without meeting the “proficient” standard in language arts. They are not deemed to be at the level to read and comprehend and communicate in English at a level deemed appropriate for the age and grade level. In mathematics the ratio is four in 10.
With this weak foundation, less than a fifth of high school students pass five subjects, including maths and English, in the single sitting in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate exams.  And the United Nations agency, UNICEF, reported that the average 11.7 years Jamaican children spend in schools produces only “7.2 years of learning when benchmarked against top-performing systems”.  This is a four-and-a-half-year gap.
Basic and primary schools have more to do than organise graduation ceremonies. Their focus must be on fixing the education deficit. The critical mission of primary schools must ensure that children read, write, comprehend and do sums at levels appropriate for their ages and grades 
The government must ban these over-the-top ceremonies at state-funded institutions at the pre-secondary level.