Dear Editor,

The cry is the same across the regions: children are placed in schools which parents have been shunning for some time. Parents are the barometers as regards good or bad schools for their children. Had the Ministry of Education stuck with the cut-off points to guide placements, parents would feel that education was going somewhere.

I guess the argument for doing away with cut-off points is that children must go to the school closest to where they live. These people are ignoring the fact that all schools are not the same in terms of the type of learning environment, quality of teachers, quality of intake, learning facilities such as libraries, labs and more.

Considering that I live in Diamond and my child obtained 430 marks, why was she not placed at Diamond Secondary School instead of Soesdyke Secondary? The latter school leaves much to be desired.

If we are bent on placing children closer to where they live, then something is very wrong. Some good secondary schools will now be spoilt because children of varying abilities are being placed in them. For those who devised this system, I feel that they should feel the guilt of deliberately inconveniencing students and condemning them to mediocrity. It is also frustrating those who are placed in schools geared for a higher academic performance than they are capable of performing.

This present placement will create chaos in classrooms, increase teachers’ frustration and escalate deviant behaviour.

I said time and again to colleagues that we should not tamper with a system that works. We should ignore new findings that only allow people to experiment with new programmes at the expense of the children.

The SCCP now being introduced will never be better than the programmes that were offered at graded schools such as the CHS and the multilateral schools. Time alone will unravel the consequences of our decisions.

Yours faithfully,
(Name and address provided)