The Role of the School in Improving Student Performance in Challenging Contexts

The Role of the School in Improving Student Performance in Challenging Contexts Welcome to this first EduExchange discussion on the Role of the School in Improving Student Performance in Challenging Contexts. As the former Chief Inspector of Education, I believe that schools play an ever expanding and important role in the social transformation of Jamaica. Schools are often expected in Jamaica to do so much more than impart knowledge; they are expected to mould and improve upon the children who enter their doors. Many families place a lasting faith in the ability of schools to ‘make something’ of their children and open doors to a better future for them.We have started another academic year with our usual hopes and great expectations. The good news is that student performance seems to have improved at all levels during 2009/2010. But even while performance has improved, many are aware that the academic standards being achieved by some groups of Jamaican children continue to pose a serious challenge to overall systems improvements.  It seems most difficult to effect real and sustained improvements for children attending schools in the remote rural areas and in the inner cities.  For those of us working in education policy and as teachers and school leaders, we know that we have seen a plethora of interventions to address the most stubborn problems of low literacy levels and overall poor academic performance.  Some projects have intervened at the level of teacher training, others have provided resources for use in classrooms and yet others have focused on making instructional leaders of our Principals.  Weaknesses in the culture of evaluation have left us unsure of what has helped.This discussion is all about how we can engineer schools- reshape them- to finally break the back of the problem of student underperformance in challenging contexts. These challenges are generally posed by poverty, but we know that for too many of our children that is closely accompanied by violence. Deprivation has many consequences, several of them linked to low cognitive development.We hope that our discussion in the next three days will help us understand how schools can help to break the cycle of underachievement of  our most needy students. Where do we start? What issues have we ignored in all our work to provide support for children and their families in these environments?Join us over the next three days as together we discuss (Day 1) Raising Teacher Expectation of children in high poverty schools; (Day 2) Curriculum Support for under-performing children and (Day 3) How schools can engage with families in difficult circumstances. As we share we hope our collective knowledge can move us closer to a solution for this problem.Elaine Foster-Allen