ONLY three of the 203 students who got a place in the 2023 cohort for grade seven at Holy Trinity High could read at the required level, and, in 2024, the numbers were practically the same.

Dismayed by the dismal results, a group of educators have flipped the curriculum on its head, creating a new system — the 7th Grade Academy — that they hope will give the youngsters a fighting chance in school.

“In primary school, I thought I wasn’t smart like other kids,” said Tessan Taylor, a seventh grade student at the St Andrew school.

Tessan was reading at the grade six level when she started grade seven as part of the 2024 cohort, and among that batch, others were reading at “primer” or basic school level. This meant that they simply could not understand enough to undertake high school learning.

“Unfortunately, this is not [specific] to the Holy Trinity High School, but, I dare say, to many schools across Jamaica,” said Faith Alexander, an educator with international and local experience in literacy and numeracy improvement.

Audrey Ellington, principal of Nain High School in St Elizabeth — the other institution participating in the programme — explained what she had observed.

“We have students who are reading below the primary school level — students who cannot even identify letters or letter sounds. We have students who do not know two-letter words, and these are students coming in at high school,” she said.

As Tessan would discover though, all they needed was a boost.

Just four months after being in the programme, Tessan now reads at the grade nine level, and her classmates are improving swiftly alongside her.

The results are thanks to the 7th Grade Academy, created by St Michael’s College with support from the Ministry of Education and a suite of private sector partners.

Combining educational psychology and neuroscience, the academy suspends the traditional Jamaican seventh-grade curriculum. The school year is extended, class sizes are cut to 20, and timetables are reduced with a focus on a special curriculum of math — often remedial — English, civics, sports, a skill, and performance art or agriculture.

The programme is being piloted at Holy Trinity High and Nain High School. The St Andrew school started classes in September and the St Elizabeth institution started a few weeks ago.

At Holy Trinity, it’s taken the installation of Starlink Internet service, interactive online classes, intense one-on-one sessions, and weekly monitoring reports on every student. In fact, Alexander, who is the instructional lead, said in a single term, the students have doubled the level of improvement seen in their predecessors in an entire year.

“On average, students have shown an increase of over 1.5 grade levels in this term alone, compared to their September results. Looking at anecdotal data from last year’s grade seven cohort, on average, the students moved .7 grade levels over a one-year period,” she explained during the official programme launch last Thursday.

At that event, Tessan and her classmates demonstrated their reading and performance arts prowess.

Programme lead and former Campion College Principal Grace Baston told the Jamaica Observer that due to the rains last year, and holidays in December, the students had effectively had only about eight full weeks of formal training under the programme.

Fast ForWord for English lessons and ClearMath are the software used to help students practise and they are tested at regular intervals.

The new curriculum was approved by the Ministry of Education, who gave programme runners free rein to change it for the entire year, with the hope that if they can bring literacy and numeracy skills up to par then the students will be able to fully absorb their high school education.

“So many students come into high school and they are unable to read and write; and in the nature of a large education system in which there are many successes, there are, too, many who don’t make it,” stressed former education minister and coordinator of Catholic education Ronald Thwaites as he chaired the event.

But how is it that Jamaican students getting to high school are functionally unable to read?

Not the students’ fault

The educators and authorities who spoke to the Sunday Observer said, automatic advancement, low parental involvement, and teaching missteps at the basic school and primary school levels have worked together in a perfect storm to cripple these young people.

“I want to think that we as educators, starting from the ministry level, down to the parents at home, have a whole lot to do with it. In my days, I know that the teachers who usually taught me at basic school had passion,” Ellington lamented.

Minister of Education, Skills, Youth and Information Dana Morris Dixon admitted that many of the issues were rooted at the lower levels.

“You don’t get into first form or grade seven with issues if [they] didn’t start before,” she said. “That’s why I keep saying we have to prioritise early childhood education. Through the Early Childhood Commission, we’re even doing tests earlier. When a child is four, we’re doing assessments to see where they are so that we can intervene.”

“Another thing we’re doing with the early childhood [level] is our commitment to having one trained teacher in every early childhood institution — whether it’s Government-run or not,” she added.

Baston said promoting students who had not mastered a grade level to higher grades was more harmful than helpful. Ellington, too, stressed that it makes more sense to have students repeat classes and truly absorb the information rather than speed ahead, to their detriment.

She was also deeply concerned about the traumatic experiences to which students were subjected, including the death of parents. Ellington stressed that counselling is desperately needed for them.

“My heart aches with some of the things that these children go through; as an adult, I have not gone through it as yet,” she said.

When students are from backgrounds that are less fortunate, it can exacerbate the issue, Ellington explained.

“Too many of the parents are hustling to make a living for their children and their families and they do not pay attention to their children.”

Lanre Chin, a mentoring officer at the Jamaica Teaching Council, agreed.

“There’s a lack of engagement at home and at home, many are left to their own devices and when you bring them to school under rules and structure, it becomes a problem,” he said.

Ellington also contended that the curriculum needs to keep up with the times, becoming more interesting to attract and hold the attention of students living in a digital age.

Determined to succeed

Along with literacy issues, educators noted explosive anger, short attention spans, and restlessness in students. Still, in the face of the challenges, the teachers who spoke to the Sunday Observer were fiercely passionate about bringing the students up to the required level.

Ellington said, “We are excited about it, and so, too, are the students. We are hoping that over time we will tell the true story and the success story of having our grade seven academy together.”

The students and their parents are showing up as well. Parent-teacher association meetings are seeing a 60 per cent subscription rate at Holy Trinity.

“Attendance and punctuality rates are higher than the rest of the school; it tells me those children want to come to school, they’ve convinced their parents they want to come to school,” said Baston.

Thwaites is inviting data checkers to assess the programme and verify the results shared, as proof of its success so far.

“We talk a lot about transforming education, it is really education that transforms. The students meaningfully engaged in learning is a human being in the process of transformation,” said Baston.