Damion Crawford’s lawsuit claiming that Jamaica is in breach of its constitutional mandate of providing free pre-primary and primary education to the island’s children will open a new front in the debate on the inadequacies of a national education system that is universally accepted to be in deep crisis.

But while the court may agree with Mr Crawford that the Government has failed, or its failing, to fulfill its obligation, it is unlikely that a panel of judges will lay out policy prescriptions to a government or appoint supervisors to oversee their implementation.  This is not quite as if, say, the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) were to be instructed to do something to improve prisoners’ welfare and someone was appointed to track and report on the effort.  Education policy, and the outcomes therefrom, is an altogether different kettle of fish.

Which is why The Gleaner’s Editorial Board again calls for a full and serious debate on the Patterson Commission report as well as for a halt to the implementation of its recommendations - except those involving technological upgrades or on which there was clear pre-Patterson consensus - until there is clarity on what is being implemented, their deliverables, and the timeframe within which their projected outcomes will be apparent.  Frankly, the current implementation programme seems more a box-ticking process rather than an exercise to achieve Patterson’s intention: the transformation of the education system.  The Patterson Commission was chaired by the Jamaica-born, Harvard University sociology professor Orlando Patterson.