The Jamaica Education Transformation Commission, 2021: Summary of Recommendations

Abstract

Jamaica’s education system boasts many successes: among these are relatively high enrolment rates at some levels, and world class universities that yield talented individuals of the highest calibre. Despite these achievements, however, the system grapples with three major crises. Firstly, Jamaica is in the midst of what the World Bank calls a ‘learning crisis’, where the system has failed to educate a majority of children who attend school. Secondly, it faces an administrative crisis of organizational and strategic incoherence, redundancy and unaccountability, leading to chronic inefficiency. These two crises have been exacerbated by the third crisis: the covid-19 pandemic and its disastrous, yet still unmeasurable impacts on the provision of quality education. Irrefutably, this pandemic has been an educational calamity from which it will take a long time to recover. Detailed justifications of the recommendations below, and sub-recommendations, can be found in the full report of the Jamaica Education Transformation Commission.