JAMAICA is phasing out 49 all-age and junior high schools, which are to be converted to primary schools this September.
All-age and primary and junior high schools have grades one to nine, while primary schools go from grades one to six. The schools to be converted have not had any children in their seven, eight and nine grades over the past two academic years, according to Education Minister Andrew Holness.
He said this happened because all the students in the primary department of those schools were placed in high schools as a result of their performance in the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT).
There are 159 all-age and 87 junior high schools in the island.
Speaking at the recent handing over of a new classroom block at the Constant Spring Primary and Junior High School in St Andrew, Holness said he will make a statement in Parliament about the changes and have them gazetted.
Meanwhile, the education minister said that contrary to the conventional view that smaller schools with smaller class sizes do better than larger schools with large classes, in Jamaica it is the opposite.
He said this was because schools perceived to have better leadership and which produced better results were in greater demand from parents who wished to register their children at those schools.
"When we do an analysis of the Grade Four Literacy Test, we would have presupposed that smaller schools would invariably do better than large schools, but that is not consistently the case. In fact most of the large schools do better than the small schools," Holness said.
"A school is not small usually because it was built small. It is small because parents see the quality that is offered in many of the schools and decide 'I don't want my child in this school'. They make a decision to send them to a school that is doing better. We see cases where parents will walk past one school gate to register their child in a school that they have to take two buses or taxis to get to," he said.
The minister, at the same time, urged parents not to be distracted by the so-called "political considerations" involved in the auditing of schools. He said the audits were being done to improve the performance of the schools for the benefit of the children.
