Immediate past president of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association Nadine Molloy has during her tenure intensified the debate on the education of the nation and has tirelessly championed placing education as a top priority on the national agenda.She favours a more panoramic approach to education, one that takes a closer look at the role of the society, parenting, a moral compass, greater attention paid to the profession of teaching and a closer examination of children’s abilities. She does not subscribe to the view that because children fail to jump prescribed educational hurdles, they should be confined to the scrap heap and deemed as ” failures”.

Minister of Education Andrew Holness has been very strident of late on the performance of what he deems “failing schools”. Earlier this month he declared: “Education is so important to national development that we cannot sit by and allows any of our schools to fail in the service of our children. In this regard the Government has decided to confront the difficult and controversial issues in education.

“We are aware that such a move will not be without resistance; however, we are resolute and committed to transforming Jamaica through education.”

Holness has announced that both the Jamaica Teaching Council and the National College for Education Leadership will play a significant role in getting the school system on the right track and act as a fillip to the teaching profession.

He added: “Too many students are completing high school functionally illiterate, maladjusted, unexposed and unprepared for the challenges of a modern economy,adulthood and citizenship. Our education system has been functioning like this for many decades. From an economic perspective, it has contributed to Jamaica’s wide income inequality, low productivity and large number of uncertified and unskilled workers in our labour force.”

Molloy does not believe that the blame for the failure of Jamaica’s education system lies at the feet of its teachers.

“You know the essential ingredients necessary to our children’s performance are missing, and it’s not the fault of the teacher,” she said.

Speaking at the ceremony for the incoming president of the 47th the annual conference of the JTA at Sunset Jamaica Grande Resort in Ocho Rios last month, she said: “A more worthy cause of action, I believe, is how to bring on board the private sector partners that we need to effectively create the nearly 50,000 school spaces that we need. With tongue firmly planted in cheek she went on: ” I want to say to our chief teacher who leads our chief partner in the Ministry of Education, that you need the JTA as much as teachers need you. You see, Minister, education is like a river and you canna cross it alone.

“You need the teacher men and the teacher women . You see, it is only those who understand it, who can cross it. The JTA understands it. And you need the JTA ’cause the JTA can swim or you gonna end up down a failure pond.”

So what were the best moments of Molloy’s tenure as President of the JTA? Speaking with Caribbean Business Report from Kingston, she replied: “Those when I was actively engaged with the teachers. I was elected to represent them and I tried to do so to the best of my abilities. When you get a mandate like the one I got, you have no choice but to work very hard.”

The early years

Molloy is not a dilettante playing at improving the education system, rather she has pledged her life to the cause and her resume bears this out. She is the principal of Buff Bay High School in Portland where she hails from. She attended Marymount High School in Highgate before going on to Exed Community College. She then worked at the Jamaica Library Service before going on to become a fully trained librarian.

She began her career as a teacher at Bishop Gibson High School in Mandeville and while there completed teacher training at Church Teachers’ College through the advanced placement program. She went on to acquire her Master’s and was awarded the Lasco Principal of the Year 2009/10 Award. She has been a member of the JTA for many years and is devoted to the profession of teaching.

She come from a well respected family in Portland. Her father, Hezekiah Molloy, is the well-loved former mayor of Port Antonio and her mother a former teacher. She grew up with both parents, five sisters , two brothers and a cousin and describes her childhood as ” full of the joys of rural Jamaica.” She says that from her father she takes a love and respect of people: “One of the best tributes people pay to my father is that he should not have been a politician but rather a pastor”

Hezekiah’s daughter

So what does her father make of her efforts with the JTA and her thoughts on Jamaican education?

“He is proud of what I am doing and he is very encouraging. He attentively listens to what I have to say and is not afraid to tell me if he thinks I am going over the top. He is proud of the work I have done at Buff BayHigh School. To go back to your hometown and work is not always an easy thing. He would have preferred it if I had not returned home. I did not enter the education profession because my mother was a teacher – education called me.” She obtained a Bachelor of Arts in English, Sociology and Linguistics from Andrews University. Molloy thought of entering the field of law but opted instead to take up a teaching position in Mandeville and has built a stellar career in education ever since.

Many young women armed with a good degree would have looked to enter professions that would prove far more financially rewarding. Molloy is quick to declare, “I am not motivated by money! The satisfaction you get from working with young people and seeing changes in them cannot be created by anything else. What many non-educators fail to understand is that the change in children does not come when you want them to come. Learning doesn’t necessarily take place when you have taught. It is not about ABC, it is about changing a life. You have to keep encouraging those children who are not doing it right because whatever you teach them , whether it be from the Path cirriculum or the inter-active curriculum, it is going to show up in that child when it becomes an adult. Which is why many of us teachers do not take on those who make a big hullabaloo about children’s test scores. We recognise that all children do not necessarily learn at the same level. Readiness is important but children are not all ready at the same time, so you have to factor that in when you are teaching.”

No such thing as failing pupils

Molloy has made it patently clear on numerous occasions that she doesn’t subscribe to the term ” failing schools and ” failing pupils.” She explained:

“You would not tell your child that he or she is a failure, so why label an entire school with all its pupil as a “failure”? That doesn’t serve to motivate children or teachers. In fact it has the opposite effect. I think that’s part of the blame game we all too often engage in a lot in this country. You constantly hear it: “it’s the students, it’s the parents, it’s the system.”

“For the most part we do not know why the children are not learning. You don’t know if they are dyslexic or have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. You don’t know if the child has a hearing disorder problem. No one realised that I had a sight problem until I was in Grade 3. You see, one cap doesn’t fit all.

“A problem that is never properly addressed in Jamaica is that when a child is severely hungry, that child cannot focus on learning on a satisfactory level. There are those who do not make it at fifth form but make it later on. There is all this talk out there which puts everybody in one basket and fails to account for social environment, deficiencies , lack of financial resources. It really is short-sighted.

” Having determined what is wrong with these children, have you trained the teachers to deal with it ? Training is critical. We focus on what is wrong with the principal but disregard the middle managers. At the JTA we have been discussing in depth how best to train middle managers and senior teachers. As far as I am concerned, too much of the burden is placed on the principal’s shoulders.”

The autonomy to act with authority

Molloy notes that many teachers and middle managers are wary of executing what they have to do. She attributes this to a sense that the system does not give them the autonomy to act with authority. She senses they are not willing to take on the task at hand, probably for fear of being scolded by their superiors. She adds that school boards have a great role to play as far as governance is concerned and that many of the members occupy seats primarily for social cachet and not for turning out better schools. On this point she said: ” Our boards need to be trained as well. Many of them do not understand their role or how to make a school become effective. What you can do in a bank or insurance company, you can’t do in an educational institution because it is not about the bottom line. There are two aspects to running a school. Firstly there is the instructional leadership role. The principal has to be given the latitude to run and lead the school. Secondly, there is the business aspect where you manage the plant, your funds and do your maintenance. That is why I think the bursar has to be upgraded to the equivalent of a vice-principal. That way, the bursar can take the burden off the principal so he or she can focus on teaching, empower teachers’ professional development and guide curriculum development.The Principal has to place the school in an advantageous position through its participation in core curriculum activities.”

Lack of funds, cutting budgets

Educators in Jamaica today face the Herculean task of attempting to improve schools and produce better students while at the same having to contend with shrinking budgets. The question facing the Minister of Education is how do you improve Jamaican education on fewer resources and can you expect better given that fact? The Ministry of Education’s budget has been on a downward trend over the past three financial years. This year’s budget (2011-12) based on the estimates of expenditure presented in April was J$70.5 billion – a decrease from the 2010-11 estimates of $72.1 billion, which was itself lower than the $74 billion received in the 2009-10 financial year.

Supplementary Estimates tabled by Minister of Finance Audley Shaw in the House of Representatives on August 30 2011, further cut the Ministry of Education’s budget by $800 million.

In response to these repeated cuts Holness said: ” Every ministry has been called upon to be more efficient, more frugal. The Ministry of Education is no exception and shouldn’t be. We have lived in Jamaica under the assumption that education must not be accountable, that it must not be efficient.

“I don’t believe in the near future that we will have enough resources to solve our problems without looking at the real issues of efficiency and accountability. I keep saying to people that the way to get more is to use less.”

Molloy takes a different view and says she had hoped that the government would have overlooked cutting the budget for education. She believes that deep cuts in Jamaica’s education budget at this time will have severe implications in the long term.

She is quoted as saying: ” I would not want to see the teaching and learning aspect of education affected. Then there is the more social aspect of it with the support programme, that’s very critical to fill the gaps in the community with your school feeding programmes and so on. But then again there is the vexed issue of short school spaces… it’s a very difficult one to determine where do you go and what you would want to see fill the brunt of this economic pinch.”

She is of the view that successive Jamaican governments have not found the will to put as much money as they need to into education.

Can the Jamaican government offer free tertiary education especially as it harbours ambitions to be considered as a developed country by 2030?

Molloy responds: ” It’s not a good thing to tell Jamaicans about something being free. Once you go there it becomes devalued. Don’t get me wrong. I believe that at this level, education should be state-funded so that we can do all the things that we want to do, but there is a culture in Jamaica that if it belongs to government we don’t respect it and it is to be abused because the government will fix it and pay for it, as though we are not the government.”

The private sector can play a bigger role

So should the private sector step up more and play a bigger role in the education of the nation? In many developed countries one sees great acts of philanthropy in this area, but it is very negligible in Jamaica.

” I think that would be the way to go especially outside of Kingston. I think that corporate Jamaica can step up to the plate. I have tried to encourage them to do so. If they give a scholarship and grab a headline, that’s fine, but for them to quietly support a school, well, that doesn’t happen too often,”said Molloy.

The immediate past president of the JTA takes a keen interest in the role of the home and the wider society in the education process. She would like to take a closer look at the approach to the education of boys in Jamaica as opposed to girls at the secondary level, as all too often girls are proving more successful at school than boys. She does not take the stance of the aloof, distant school principal but rather engages her pupils and tries to get to know them in order to better understand their capabilities. She is not above socialising with them sometimes and regards this as all part of the education process.

Unruly behaviour in schools

The number of cases of unruly behaviour in schools is on the increase and Molloy has a front-row seat here as principal of a school. It is a constant battlefield every day and teachers are not immune from joining the walking wounded. The principal of Buff Bay High School has appealed to teachers and school administrators to be cautious when dealing with students with serious behavioural problems. Responding to cases where teachers have been attacked, she urges teachers to work together and to ensure that the actions they take against indiscipline students are lawful.

The call to political representation

Nadine Molloy is committed to nation building and she sees education as a major cornerstone of that. There are those who ask with her credentials , abilities and thoughts on educating the nation, whether she would enter the realm of politics, perhaps take a seat in the House of Representatives in order to effect real change.

“That subject has come up before, but my main focus is on education and producing good pupils who can help to make Jamaica a better country.”