The Green Paper on Education prepared in 1999 by the Ministry of Education in Jamaica bears the title “Education: The Way Upward”, indicating perhaps the tremendous importance of education to the future development of the island. It attests that "it is the return on the investment in the building of human and social capital that represents our best hope for economic growth and social peace”.The first three papers in the Institute of Education Annual deal with aspects of primary education. In “Are Culture-Fair Tests Really Fair to Jamaican Students?” Barbara Matalon reports the results of an assessment of the reasoning abilities of a sample of 800 students attending Grades 1 and 4 in government primary schools and in private schools. Results showed that children from families of low socioeconomic status who attended government primary schools scored significantly lower than children from families of middle, high-middle, and high socioeconomic status who attended private schools. Scores of grade 1 students were compared with those in grade 4. The interesting finding was that scores were similar across grades for students attending government schools, but increased marginally across grades for students attending private schools. This result suggests, among other things, that the government schools are failing to effect any improvement in the reasoning abilities of students during their first three to four years in school. It points to an urgent need for reform in order to make government primary schools more effective.