Two major efforts are currently under way to reform school boards across Jamaica.
Chairman of the Education Transformation Oversight Committee (ETOC), Dr. Adrian Stokes, outlined these during ETOC’s Press Conference at Jamaica House on Wednesday (July 23).
Noting that governance is critical to the proper functioning of any education system, Dr. Stokes emphasised that improving the cadre of individuals seeking to serve on school boards is essential to advancing educational outcomes.
“To achieve this, we are making the application process for serving on a school board very transparent, similar to what obtains in the wider public sector. Soon, individuals who wish to serve on a school board will upload their CVs [curriculum vitae] and other relevant information to a website managed by the Ministry [of Education, Skills, Youth and Information],” he explained.
The ETOC Chairman shared that applicants will be vetted to ensure they are fit and proper, with the ultimate goal of aligning individual competencies with the specific governance needs of each school.
Dr. Stokes said the second critical reform relates to legislative changes, noting that the current composition of government-operated school boards can produce a perverse outcome – where an institution effectively governs itself.
“This means that members from a school who are appointed to the board can effectively control the board’s decisions. This is an obvious conflict and goes against well-established good governance principles. The goal is to ensure that the rules applicable to government-run schools are similar to those that apply to church-run schools,” he stated.
Dr. Stokes pointed out that Jamaica’s education system is relatively decentralised, with significant responsibility delegated to school boards to oversee institutional performance.
He said this underscores the importance of how school boards are selected, noting that several key factors must be considered.
These factors, Dr. Stokes said, include competence and intellectual diversity, rules governing board quorum, and the process for selecting chairpersons, all of which are essential to ensuring the proper composition and effective performance of school boards.
ETOC has been tasked with monitoring the implementation of 365 recommendations outlined in the Professor Orlando Patterson-chaired Jamaica Education Transformation Commission (JETC) report.
The recommendations cover seven pillars of transformation – governance and accountability; early childhood education; teaching, curriculum, and teacher training; tertiary education; technical and vocational education and training (TVET); infrastructure and technology; and finance