SANTA CRUZ, St Elizabeth — It’s been a long, hard and frustrating struggle but now principal of the Santa Cruz Primary and Junior High, Ivorine Dwyer, believes her school is set for a new and glorious path.

Her optimism has been triggered by the Ministry of Education’s removal of the shift system from the school and its replacement by normal ‘straight day’ or ‘full day’ of classes and instruction.

News

Wait just a little while

McKenzie urges patience as work continues on Buff Bay Market

BY EVERARD OWEN Observer writer 

February 15, 2025

MINISTER of Local Government and Rural Development Desmond McKenzie has promised that the renovation of Buff Bay market in western Portland will be co...

{"xml":"xml"}{"jamaica-observer":"Jamaica Observer"}

“This is phenomenal for students, teachers and for the parents who have long awaited the change to straight day,” a smiling Dwyer told the Jamaica Observer Central recently.

For the September term, the education ministry removed 20 schools from the shift system islandwide. An additional 12 are to be removed later this year and by 2017 all 48 schools remaining on shift will be switched to straight day, the ministry has said.

Sports, Tennis

Sinner affair shows tennis anti-doping ‘broken’, leaves players ‘scared’

February 17, 2025

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AFP) — World number five Jessica Pegula believes the handling of high-profile doping cases involving Jannik Sinner and Ig...

{"xml":"xml"}{"jamaica-observer":"Jamaica Observer"}

In addition to Santa Cruz Primary and Junior High, three other schools in the Ministry of Education’s Region Five (St Elizabeth and Manchester) were taken off shift last month. They are BB Coke High, Roger Clarke High (previously Balaclava High) and Hatfield Primary and Junior High.

Knowledgeable observers of Jamaica’s education say that when it first started in the 1970s, the shift system was intended as a temporary measure to find a high school space for all Jamaican children. The intention then was for the government to rapidly build classroom spaces so that the system which splits students in morning and afternoon shifts would be speedily phased out.

Athletics, Sports

Titchfield’s Jarrett undecided between 400m and 800m at Champs

BY PAUL A REID Observer writer reidp@jamaicaobserver.com 

February 15, 2025

Shavan Jarrett wants his final Inter-secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA)/GraceKennedy Athletics Championships to be his very best. And after y...

{"xml":"xml"}{"jamaica-observer":"Jamaica Observer"}

However, a succession of economic crises and resulting lack of money dramatically slowed the classroom building programme.

Critics of the shift system say that while it achieved the broad objective of providing high school spaces, it has also led to a contraction of teaching time and reduced student discipline. There are also safety issues, with children on the morning shift leaving home very early while many on the afternoon shift get home long after dark.

“We believe that the elimination of the shift system will improve teaching and learning by increasing teacher-pupil contact time and also remove some of the vulnerabilities which our students experience being on the streets at very early or very late hours,” Education Minister Ronnie Thwaites explained at the start of the September term.

Dwyer who was appointed principal at Santa Cruz Primary and Junior High in 2005, seven years after the shift system was introduced there, agrees with the education minister.

“Removal of shift means more contact hours (between teachers and students), more teaching hours, students can go at a slower pace and assimilate more information, they can play for longer hours, they can interact for longer hours,” she said.

She also touched on other “inherent problems” of the shift system. “You can’t constantly monitor those who come in early and those who are leaving school. Everything is very fast-paced, children don’t get a chance to assimilate much and the core values that you want to pass on to them many times get lost. I feel really good about the change at this school,” she said.

The expectation is that over time, Santa Cruz Primary and Junior High which currently accommodates 823 students will become a straight primary school from Grade One to Grade Six, with the junior high aspect phased out. However, the A-Step programme which caters for slow learners at age 13-15 currently accommodates 160 students and could be around for sometime yet.

There is every indication, though, that in about two years the Junior High aspect which includes Grade Seven, Eight and Nine will be phased out.

For the 2015 school year there were no Grade Seven entrants to Santa Cruz Primary and Junior High, there were only 22 Grade Eight students and 80 students in Grade Nine. The Grade Nine group will exit the school with the Grade Nine Achievement Test next year.

Dwyer expects that as the systems are streamlined and the school is able to focus more sharply on core primary education, academic performances at the Grade Six and Grade Four levels will rapidly improve.

Dwyer says her teachers are trying “their very best” with A-Step students, many of whom are functionally illiterate. The A-Step students — most coming from other schools — are those who failed the Grade Four Literacy and Numeracy Test and as a result would have been barred from sitting the high school entrance exam, the Grade Six Achievement Test.

The situation of those students bear stark testimony to the socio-economic underpinnings of Jamaica’s problems in education, Dwyer said. To begin with, she says, school attendance for children most in need of help, not least those in the A-Step programme, is very irregular. Most of those children are from very poor homes with parents and guardians who are themselves illiterate or at best semi-literate.

“A big part of the struggle for those children is attendance,” said Dwyer. “It is very weak. You will find that those who come to the A-step programme are often from disadvantaged homes and education is hardly valued and poverty a severe factor…” she said.

For school leaders and teachers, making contact with many of those parents is a constant headache.

“Reaching the home is a problem,” said Dwyer. “You will try sending notes to those homes but then you will find that some of those parents cannot read those notes and you will find that the students cannot read for them. So it’s a vicious cycle and they (children) are really at risk,” said Dwyer.

She hopes for the day when school attendance will be made compulsory under the law. “Students should be in school so it is something any government could consider,” she said.

The change from the shift at Santa Cruz Primary and Junior High is coinciding

with belated centenary celebrations there.

Records show that the Santa Cruz Government School opened its doors in June 1914. Dwyer explained that a “few problems” prevented the centenary celebrations last year.

However, in April this year, a special anniversary service was held and a plaque was laid to mark the school’s centenary.

Dwyer has also been involved on a mission to record the story of the school over the last 101 years. Research has thrown up names of some of the school’s leading educators and its achievements through the decades.

To that end, she said, the school has developed a billboard or ‘honour board’ in the library to outline and highlight aspects of the school’s history.

“An institution without a history is going nowhere,” she explained.

Trophies and markers of achievement in academics and extra-curricular activities in more recent times also command a special place.

Dwyer takes pride that under her charge the school, including students, teachers and staff have been gradually developing a change in culture.

“Culture is very hard to change but as we continue to lead in a particular direction with positive values and attitudes, things have changed for the better,” she said.

“When I came here September 2005 you would have found after break that on the whole compound students just ate and dropped (garbage)… I am not saying they don’t drop now, but now people are much more inclined to drop in the bin,” said Dwyer.

“So ten years ago you wouldn’t come here at 10:30 am and see the place as it is today. When you come outside you would see the place paved with garbage,” she said.

“Today, the school is a totally different place. When I first came here, every single day we had fights, gang fights in the afternoon shift. They (culprits) jumped the fence and made they escape into the town. Now you do have fights but they are few and far between and mostly repeat offenders,” she said.

She claimed gangs had been eradicated at the school. “Now as soon as I get wind of gangs I step on it. Today you can’t find an active gang in this school,” she said.

Dwyer believes that elimination of the shift system is the last big piece of the puzzle in the drive to unleash the true potential of Santa Cruz Primary and Junior High.

“This school is poised for growth,” she said, “just watch.”