Coming out of an interview with Minister of Education Andrew Holness, The Sunday Gleaner this week carried a lead story headlined 'School heads fail' and yesterday's Gleaner carried a lead story headlined 'Wanted: better student teachers'. The following is an excerpt from the interview in which Holness was commenting on the country's national report on the status of its Millennium Development Goals. The report highlights that the quality of education being provided at the primary level was a problem.

Andrew Holness: If you notice, we acknowledge that quality is the problem. but when you start to talk about quality, then you have to bring in the issue of accountability. So let us look at the inspectorate. Are schools performing to set standards? Well, the first question is, are there standards, and are schools performing to those standards? You have to inspect the schools to determine that.

What would be causing the quality issue (in education) from where you stand?

The quality issue stems from poor leadership, that's number one.

At what level, leadership at what level?

At the school level.

Meaning the principals?

Yeah, that's number one. Number two, poor quality intake into the teachers' colleges, and that's number two.

Meaning what? The vetting process?

In other words, for many years, teaching was viewed as the profession of second best. You know you can't get into anything else, you go into teaching. You may not have had people going into the profession who are of the best quality.

That is a bad way to look at the profession that churns out the future leaders and everybody, actually.

Well, that is the point, which is now why we are establishing the Jamaica Teaching Council to license teachers, right. So we are grappling with the issues of quality.

But remember now, there is a trade-off of a policy perspective, once you take into consideration a budget constraint, in providing access and providing quality. Now, governments have to balance on the spectrum between quality and access to make sure that they are providing a quality space. So that's the goal now - to provide quality spaces. Now how you do it, that's the challenge.