Mathematics Teacher Quality and Four Decades of CSEC Mathematics Underachievement in Jamaica: Reconsidering the Teacher-Quality Explanation of a Persistent National Dilemma

Abstract

Mathematics achievement has remained one of the most persistent challenges confronting Jamaica's secondary education system, despite repeated curriculum reforms, professional-development programmes, mathematics coaches, specialist-teacher initiatives and substantial public investment in education. This study critically examines approximately four decades of Jamaican performance in Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) Mathematics and evaluates the extent to which the quality, preparation, deployment and retention of mathematics teachers help explain the persistence and volatility of these outcomes. Using an integrative historical-policy review, the study synthesises CSEC performance data, national mathematics policy, education-transformation reports, governmental records and empirical scholarship on mathematics teachers and student achievement. The principal research gap arises because Jamaican studies have examined teacher-quality deficiencies, student performance, cognitive-domain weaknesses and individual interventions, but have not sufficiently integrated approximately four decades of examination outcomes with longitudinal changes in mathematics-teacher preparation, specialist supply, migration and institutional reform in one explanatory framework. The evidence suggests that mathematics-teacher quality is an important component of the problem, particularly because Jamaica has historically deployed substantial numbers of teachers without full mathematics specialisation and has repeatedly lost qualified mathematics educators, but CSEC underachievement cannot be attributed to teachers alone because foundational numeracy, socioeconomic inequalities, student selection into the examination, school leadership, resources, mathematics anxiety, curriculum-examination alignment and pandemic-related learning loss also affect outcomes. The study develops a Mathematics Teacher Quality-Achievement Continuum Framework and argues that Jamaica's four-decade dilemma is best understood not as evidence that its mathematics teachers are uniformly poor, but as evidence that the education system has not yet succeeded in ensuring that every student receives sustained access to appropriately qualified, mathematically knowledgeable, pedagogically capable and institutionally supported mathematics teaching from the primary grades through CSEC.