ISSA SHOULD MOVE TO PUNISH REAL OFFENDERS

It is extremely unfortunate that athletes from nine schools will not be able to participate in the Boys and Girls Championships set for the National Stadium between March 30 and April 2.
Many of those athletes trained hard in anticipation of producing their best stuff during the championships, and in so doing their schools proud. Ironically, it is their schools that have let them down by causing them to be barred from competing.

You see, someone or some people at those schools didn’t do their jobs, hence the entries were not submitted on time. Because they did not do their jobs, hundreds of students will now not be able to show their talents off to the rest of the country and possibly to dozens of scouts from universities in the United States looking for that individual with the right talent and attitude, a student, who would have been afforded a chance at a better way of life, by first being awarded a scholarship to pursue a degree in a discipline of their choice. But for those students barred, that opportunity will not come this year; that opportunity might never come again all because someone dropped the ball.

The Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA), frustrated by some schools repeatedly submitting late entries, decided that this is the year they were going to put their foot down. No more. And can you really blame them?
They have been trying for years to get schools to comply and meet the deadline that has been set. Now, its time to set an example.
But should the students bear the brunt of the punishment? I don’t think so.
There would be no time like the present to punish the real offenders. Perhaps this is the time for ISSA to present a case to the Ministry of Education seeking the necessary power to suspend administrators without pay for causing the school to miss the stated deadline.
School sports play an integral role in the overall development of students and as such the role of school administrators, who have the responsibility to ensure that everything is done in a timely manner so as to facilitate that development, is critical.  As such, failure to submit the entries or submitting them late, would be tantamount to not fulfilling the requirements in their job descriptions. That being the case then those administrators would be liable to face punishment.
I suspect that the reason why ISSA is now punishing the schools and by extension the innocent students, is that there are currently no legal grounds on which to punish the offending administrators. As a result the entire school suffers.
It’s time that people be held accountable. It’s easy to punish a school, not so easy to punish an administrator because this is Jamaica, and nobody wants to be caught holding the ball, a ball that they know they will subsequently drop.
But that is not a good example to set for the students. Students live what they learn and if what they learn is that no one in this country is held accountable for anything, how then do we expect them to grow into adults who are willing to accept responsibility for their actions?
The best way to teach them about life is to show them that if someone messes up and causes them to lose an opportunity to move on to greater things, they should pay.