More than fourteen thousand students sat down to write the Grade Six Assessment this year, only a small percentage of whom qualified for entry into the nation’s better secondary schools. As a consequence of this, most parents treat what was originally intended as a diagnostic tool, as an examination – which, of course, is its primary function at the present time. The major difference between the 2016 Grade Six and its more recent predecessors is that marks from the Grades Two and Four Assessments are no longer incorporated into the final result. Previously, these accounted for 15% of the marks (5% and 10% respectively). In addition to other benefits, the elimination of these assessments from consideration means that this year’s ‘exam’ was fairer.
The original plan was to abolish the Secondary Schools Entrance Examination as an instrument for placing children in secondary schools altogether, and have all of them attend the secondary school in whose catchment area they lived. In place of the SSEE, three assessments were introduced at Grades Two, Four and Six, which were simply intended, as already indicated, as a means for establishing the progress or otherwise of individual students, and by extension, of the schools they attended and the age cohort to which they belonged.
This plan was only partially implemented for the simple reason that it was designed on the premise that all secondary schools should be of a similar standard. While there has been a commendable increase in the number of secondary schools established under the previous government, the quality of these schools is variable, added to which still not every child is exposed to a secondary education in this setting. It will take time and a considerable investment to provide secondary schools across the board which can offer a place to every child in the country, let alone bring them all up to a similar standard.
Given the situation, therefore, decision-makers elected to identify the ‘best’ schools, which students displaying an academic flair could attend. These naturally included the senior secondary schools, ie, those with sixth forms which teach CAPE (the CXC equivalent of Advanced Level). It must be said that students who are given places in senior secondary schools at age eleven, do not automatically graduate to the sixth form of their school; they have to compete against those from other schools who are seeking entry, and the places go to those with the best CSEC results. This arrangement which has been in existence for many decades, provides a second opportunity to children with an academic bent who did not secure a spot in the ‘top’ schools following the Grade Six Assessment.
As things stand, the Grade Six Assessment is the most obvious mechanism for selecting children to attend the ‘best’ schools; at least it has the patina of fairness since it is not dependent on the reports of individual teachers or headteachers, or work done in the classroom which they have marked. The issue is one of how effective it is, and in the first instance that will be contingent on the quality of the test itself. It has been reported that for the 2017 assessment, there will be technical guidance from CXC in relation to areas such as item construction, weighting and sampling, which is certainly good news. There has been criticism of the Grade Six Assessment in the past, more particularly of the Social Studies paper which should either be radically revised, or abandoned altogether; it has been associated more with ‘mis-education’ than anything else.
Having said all that, however, there are still quite a number of schools, particularly in the urban areas, which may not be classed in the top category, but which still deliver a standard of education not markedly different from that offered by some of their more favoured counterparts. In any case, there is a national curriculum in operation, and secondary students also have to sit a national exam which allows the ministry to have an idea where the problems lie. Ideally, what one seeks is a system which is sufficiently flexible to allow different paths to a scholastic future for those who might seek it, and not just the state’s so-called top secondary schools.
No matter how well constructed an exam is, it will simply never capture all those who should be placed in the ‘best’ schools for academic reasons, or those who are late developers. As far as is known, no one has ever researched what percentage of the children who attended the top schools on the basis of the Grade Six Assessment, went on to enter the sixth form or the University of Guyana or some other tertiary institution of learning. As such, therefore, it is difficult to know how effectively or otherwise, the assessment identifies those who are academically disposed.
Parents set great store by the Grade Six Assessment, because they see it as something you pass or fail; it is not – aside from placing a very small number of candidates in selected schools. Children have a wide spectrum of abilities or potential abilities, and a large number of them are not inclined to follow an academic path; schools generally need to cater for a range of talents, in order that opportunities for students are not limited in adult life. It is, however, true that no matter which school they attend, all children require a sound basic education.
What sets the top schools apart may arguably be the quality of the teaching, although it is likely too that their intake of middle-class children is higher than in other schools, and that the parents are better able to make good any teaching deficit. In any event, any dramatic turnaround of the Guyana education system which would bring all schools up to something like the same standard would require in the first instance attracting a large number of teachers of competence. This government needs to start thinking boldly of a Rescue Education project, recruiting teaching ‘brigades’, to give one possible example, perhaps comprising retired Guyanese educators from the diaspora who would serve for limited periods in our classrooms.
Certainly for his part, Minister of Education Rupert Roopnaraine said on Tuesday that he “would like to see teachers in the classrooms, really ensuring that their curriculums are delivered and received by the students and above all, I want to really lift the level of the education system. I think there is still a great deal to be done.”
He is certainly not wrong about that, so it is a little unfortunate that when Chief Education Officer Olato Sam, was asked by our reporter whether an analysis of the performance of all students who sat the Grade Six would be made public, he replied that this was not the ministry’s intention. We quoted him as saying, “We are in the process of examining students’ performance in every area of the examination but those reports are for the schools since it is they who will have to put systems in place to correct these matters.”
It is almost trite to remark that before you can put anything right, you first have to know what is wrong, and one might have thought that before the schools, it is essential that the ministry examines the reports so it can come to terms with the larger picture, and what has been happening over the past ten years. In the final analysis it is the ministry, not the schools which will carry the responsibility for any shortcomings. Furthermore, we will remind him that in the days when Mr Shaik Baksh was Minister of Education, he was prepared to make public the bad news about the state of education as revealed through the Grade Six results (although not Ms Priya Manickchand when she occupied the post).
With Dr Roopnaraine’s sanction, therefore, let Mr Sam take the public into his confidence; no one has a greater stake in the future of the nation’s children than the parents of those children, and they are entitled to know how all the students did in a general sense. For one thing, that will tell us a great deal more about what is happening in the system than the success of the top performers, creditable though it unquestionably is. This government promised us transparency; let us have the evidence of that commitment in the education field, and not keep secrets for the sake of what the ministry might regard as its public image.
