Sarah Stanton, education program manager of the Inter-American Dialogue, spoke with Jamaica’s Nationwide This Morning to discuss the findings of the Jamaica Education Report Card (2025). The report is a collaborative effort by the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CAPRI), the Inter-American Dialogue (IAD), and the Postgraduate Center for Research & Intelligence (PCRI). It examines critical dimensions of Jamaica’s education system, highlighting the achievements, persistent inequities, and fresh insights on the most urgent reforms.
COMMENTS FROM STANTON:
“A holistic early warning system that monitors attendance, behavior, and classroom performance is essential for identifying students at risk of dropping out before they leave school. It is far easier to support and retain students while they are still enrolled than to try to bring them back once they have made it into the official dropout statistics”.
“In general, Jamaica does a good job in preparing teachers for the classroom. This is evidenced by the fact that many teachers can actually find employment in other countries, which leads to challenges such as teacher migration and shortages in the classrooms in Jamaica. Another challenge is teacher salaries. They are not always as competitive as those in other countries with similar characteristics.”
“One recommendation to address educational gaps is to develop an incentive-based scheme in which teachers are matched with students’ needs. That is, the most effective teachers are paired up with the students who have the greatest needs. We have seen the positive outcome of an incentive-based scheme in other countries in Latin America, whereby teachers, after their initial years, are incentivized to move to more vulnerable areas through monetary bonuses. In the Jamaican context, some of these vulnerable areas may be rural communities or urban schools that are suffering from overcrowding or shortages.”
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