THE EDITOR: In his column of September 12, headlined 'Some reflections at sixty,' eminent commentator on national affairs Reginald Dumas posed some pertinent questions re education. He did not venture any answers, so, in the hope of furthering this important discussion let me remark on some of Dumas's questions.

1. 'How do we define 'education?' Education is generally defined as having formal qualifications. This, however, is not education, which is defined as having applicable/relevant skills and knowledge. The economist William Easterly has shown that official education levels do not correlate with national development.

2. 'What makes a school 'prestigious?'' Having a student cohort with an average IQ of 100. Extrapolating from PISA results for this country (which have a 0.7 correlation with IQ), the average IQ level in most schools is between 70 and 85. Research shows that IQ correlates with students' performance much more than classroom size, pedagogical equipment, teacher competence, and even socio-economic status.

3. 'To what extent do we focus on preschool education?' Dumas cites research from James Heckman (on deprived African-American children) showing that investment in pre-school education is returned by later adult benefits. However, there is no IQ increase and the social gains are small (eg, a male violent crime rate of 62 per cent at age 40 vs 51 per cent for those who took part in the Perry Preschool Programme).

Education can only move TT forward if based on reliable data. This is not the case now.

JENSEN RUSHTON

San Fernando

The post Furthering education discussion appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.