With a high pass rate at this year’s Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) examinations, it has been suggested that the Saraswati Vidya Niketan (SVN) School be treated as a pilot school by the Education Ministry and other interested educators in the drive to raise education standards.
Following the release of the CXC results, SVN Principal, Swami Aksharananda, offered an analysis in the form of a letter which was published in this newspaper.
He explained that 34 students from the Hindu School at Cornelia Ida wrote the exam and a total of 31 achieved grades 1-3 in 11 or more subjects, including Mathematics and English Language.
He further highlighted that after a review, it was found that SVN students secured an impressive 80% pass in grades 1 and 2 only, and 97% pass in grades one to three.
In the areas of Mathematics and English Language, in which there are usually poor results, SVN maintained its excellent performance.
The regional pass rate (grades 1 to 3) for Mathematics is 33%, while the national rate is 29.9%. The government pilot schools secured a pass rate of 40%, the public schools 31%, private schools 27%, and private candidates 29%.
The regional pass rate in English was 47% versus Guyana’s rate of 37%. The pilot schools topped both the regional and national rate with 52%. The pass rate for public schools was 39%, private schools 36%, and private candidates 25%.
At SVN, the Swami highlighted, the pass rate (grades one to three) for Mathematics was 97%, representing a considerable increase over the 2010 and 2011 results of 88% and 90% respectively, while the pass rate for English Language was 91% as compared with 85% and 98% for 2010 and 2011 respectively.
As far as individual subjects are concerned, he continued, the school has recorded 100% passes (grades 1-3) in Caribbean History, Economics, Geography, Human and Social Biology, Integrated Science, Information Technology, Office Administration, Principles of Business and Social Studies.
An 88% pass rate was reported in English Literature, 91% in Principles of Accounts and 97% Spanish. The Swami added that the full complement of 34 students wrote all the subjects, except Economics, Human and Social Biology and Office Administration in which 15, 14 and 20 students respectively appeared.
Swami Aksharananda stated that teachers at SVN are capable of enabling students to perform amazingly in what was described as a wholesome and conducive environment. To support this point, the Swami said that the average NGSA (Common Entrance) score of this batch of CSEC students was 471, the lowest being 381 and the highest 531.
“The student with 381 passed all 12 of her subjects with Mathematics and English… so-called ordinary students can produce extra-ordinary results. This is what teachers and students at SVN have been doing since 2005,” he noted.
The principal pointed out that no student of SVN is allowed to go outside of the school for extra lessons and that this has been the rule since the institution’s establishment.
“Whatever extra help students need, is given right here by their teachers,” he said.
P. I. Peters, in a letter published in Stabroek News on Tuesday, supported the analysis and suggested that SVN be treated as a pilot school. Peters opined that extra lessons outside of school hours is a terrible blot on the present-day school system and deprive children of their childhood, causing them to be unable to socialize or play games and as a consequence their development is stultified.
In addition to this, the writer said that extra lessons serve as a terrible oppression on parents’ money and resources.
It was also argued that a child does not need to perform extremely well at the Grade Six Assessment in order to do well in his or her further education. “Children with mediocre assessment grades have done very well at SVN. The school has shown by its performance that there is something wrong with mechanistically dumping people’s children into the less endowed schools on the basis of mediocre assessment marks,” the writer said.
Among other opinions, Peters said that secondary schools need to recapture the old discipline and moral standards, since high academic standards relate to these.
“SVN has shown that by enforcing strict school discipline and good manners children become better scholars and are sought after by employers,” he noted.
