Dear Editor,
I refer to two previous published letters: ‘A three months attachment to a workplace should replace SBAs for CXC students’ (SN, September 24) and ‘SBAs should be abolished’ (SN, September 25). I humbly disagree with the implications of the title of these two very thought provoking letters.
According to CXC, School-Based Assessment (SBA) is intended to evaluate the knowledge, skills and attitudes of students which are not easily evaluated by external examinations. For the SBA, teachers select activities which would provide students with the framework and content needed to demonstrate their achievement of the objectives as outlined in the course syllabus. Teachers are then required to mark the submitted work and award points in an objective manner that fairly reflect the students’ performance.
Compromised SBAs where the submissions had no relationship with their supposed authors seem to be the common reason put forth by the previous writers in their call for the scrapping of SBAs. This is a serious indictment and failure of the system that has led many employers to consider SBAs as a farce and may even extend into the realm of not accepting the grades that are stated on the CSEC certificates.
Before expressing such strong feelings on SBAs, we need to know how widespread forgery is. Does it happen across the board in all subject areas? Is it in some or all territories? Who is complicit in such a travesty of honesty and integrity? Is it the students, the parents, teachers, principals, officials from the Ministry of Education, CXC markers, and/or the CXC examining body as a whole?
Working on the authors’ premise of widespread forgery, then without a doubt, teachers (and by extension principals) along with CSEC evaluators are complicit in accepting forgeries. According to CXC, principals are tasked with responsibility of ensuring that teachers verify that the work submitted is that of the candidate and not that of someone else. Are there guidelines for dealing with errant teachers who accepted forged works and then submitted marks on the candidates’ behalf? You and I know that there are none (or perhaps there is and it’s at the bottom of a pile of circulars in someone office); had there been and it was taken seriously, then this problem would have been nipped in the bud since no one knows the students better than the subject teacher. Principals can have a meeting with parents of children in level 10 and 11 and outline the importance of academic integrity, and thereafter the student, parent and teacher need to sign a declaration that indicates the consequences of submitting forged SBAs (viz automatic failure in the subject area). Likewise, these teachers who are known to have submitted forged work must be referred to the TSC and a comment indicating such be affixed on any application for promotion within certain number of years. The consequence of CXC knowingly accepting forged works and sweeping the issue under the rug will certainly affect its international standing as an examining body in the region.
This brings me to another question: How exactly are SBAs executed in schools? One shot and the SBA is submitted to the teacher on its due date? Or was there, as stipulated by CXC, formative evaluation and feedback throughout the assessment terms? If it’s the latter, then forgery will be spotted easily since the teacher will be given the draft statement of the problem and introduction and would provide the next steps to the students. For some subjects, for example in the Business and Social Studies department, students work should not be exhaustive, rather, CXC stipulates that word count should not exceed 1000. Furthermore, heads of department need to check that the subject teachers are indeed reviewing and providing students with ample feedback on their SBA progress. Furthermore, teachers need to be innovative with respect to the research that will be conducted as the SBA. You are greatly increasing the chances of forgery if you give the same topic which was given within the past five years. And teachers should not wait for the ministry to hold SBA workshops; my honest advice is to form groups amongst subject specialists and invite a CSEC marker, share ideas, share research topics, know who’s doing what, share resources, accept suggestions, critique topics, learn from each other, for indeed, God helps those who help themselves.
I do not believe all subject areas are equally prone to deliberate acts of copying from a previously marked SBA or paying for it to be written up by someone else. As a previous CSEC science teacher, I can say that it is not possible that any honest and skilled science teacher not know a forged discussion or conclusion. My students had no need to ever forge the write-up for their science experiments; their textbooks and the background information that was provided were enough resource materials. And there was no need for me to ever repeat assessment activities with the next batch of students since I had an experiment bank with multiple activities for the same topic.
I was totally against CXC for scrapping the practical exam in the Sciences (it used to be called Paper V); I still think this needs to be reintroduced. Removal of SBAs, especially in the sciences, will be detrimental to experiencing science. Science is the world around us, it cannot be contained in a textbook; only a curious mind can begin to unravel and experience its true nature. Science teachers provide such opportunities in lab settings. Without SBAs in the sciences, there will be no actual need for teachers to perform rigorous experiments with their students.
SBAs are a valuable research tool. Fundamentally, their rationale and learning outcomes are sound. Far too often, there is a collective failure of the education system and all stakeholders share some amount of culpability. No one blames employers for wanting to hire the most qualified employee. The system has to collectively improve its integrity and trustworthiness and until such time, sadly, the numerous grade ones on the CSEC certificate may appear suspect – it should not ever be this way – and abolishing SBAs is surely not the way forward to re-establish the integrity and trustworthiness of the CSEC certificates.
Yours faithfully,
Aslam Hanief
