Ministry to Address Gender Imbalance in Educational Achievement

Minister of Education, Andrew Holness, has said that the Ministry will be designing “male specific” programmes as a means of addressing the gender imbalance in educational achievement.
The Minister was speaking at the official launch of the new school year at the Decarteret College in Mandeville last week.
Pointing to the dismal performance of male students in the recent Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) examinations, Mr. Holness said that girls were outperforming boys even in the traditionally male-dominated vocational areas.
“In building construction, electrical and electronic engineering, technical drawing, physics and chemistry, the percentage of females that were awarded grades one to three was higher than that of males,” he noted. He encouraged school administrators and teachers to find ways to ensure that “our males do not fall between the cracks”.
In the meantime, the Minister stated that while the 2007 examination results had showed some improvements for Jamaican students, he was concerned about the passes in Mathematics and English.
Noting that only 45 per cent of the candidates had received a passing grade in English and 30 per cent attained a passing grade in Mathematics, he said that this was a worrying sign. “We cannot continue like that. We are an English-speaking nation and we cannot continue like this,” he stressed.