Dear Editor,
A student writing CXC must do either the Third Paper or SBAs.in the subjects they entered for.
There are some private schools that were told that their CXC students should not do SBAs but the Third Paper much to their disappointment. Doing the SBAs seems to have an advantage over the Third Paper. This seems to be the general belief.
Parents were very much annoyed by this and upon further inquiries learned that permission for schools to do SBAs rests upon the consideration of the Superintendent of Exams or the Chief Education Officer. No one knows for sure why this has to be so or what criteria are used for a school to be considered eligible to do SBAs.
If this is so, then it can be believed that the field of play is not level regarding students doing SBAs and the Third Paper.
If students are preparing for CXC and opted to do the SBA instead of writing the Third Paper, why must these students be denied this privilege? Is it because they are from a private institution? Isn’t that some form of discrimination by whoever is denying these schools permission?
If students are not registered in a school and entered to write CXC in a private capacity, then it is right for them to do the Third Paper rather than the SBAs.
But it would seem that doing SBAs is a privilege enjoyed by some schools as against others. The people or agencies that are withholding permission from some schools to do SBAs should realize that these children being denied are no more or less Guyanese.
If it is a case where it is difficult and a number of students are being denied the privilege of doing SBSs, then I would tend to agree with a letter writer who wrote a letter to the editor a few weeks ago that the SBA should be scrapped, if for this one reason where the SBA is treated as a privilege for some.
Yours faithfully,
(Name and address supplied)
