The results from the annual Grade Six Assessments were no less dismal than usual, with the qualification that in 2019 there was a slight increase in the number who passed Mathematics in comparison with the previous year. This time 14,300 students sat the exams on the 17th and 18th of April. The tests were formulated in collaboration with the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), which gave technical assistance in relation to the construction and weighting of items, sampling and other psychometric components.
Some years ago, the Ministry of Education dropped the word ‘Examination’ from the title of the test and began calling it an ‘Assessment’, in tandem with the two earlier Assessments which had been introduced at Grades Two and Four. Parents were not fooled; the format of the supposedly new Grade Six Assessment was no different from the examination which preceded it, and it discharged the same function it always had. It too placed the top performers in secondary institutions which were ranked. Everyone else was supposed to attend schools offering a secondary curriculum within whose catchment area they lived. Whether or not it was always possible to go to a neighbourhood school as opposed to one further afield depended on demographic factors and the institution’s location.
The present arrangements were introduced under the PPP/C government, and had the original objective of abolishing the examination component of the Assessment altogether, so that eventually everyone would attend the secondary school nearest to them. As was admitted at the time, however, it was not possible to introduce this system in the short and medium term, because not all secondary schools were equal, and even though a number of new ones had been built, the situation in relation to equality had not changed. Whether non-streaming – which is what was implied by the original plan – was also a long-term aim of the coalition government has not been made clear, but in any case as with the previous administration, even if it were they would not have been in any position to introduce it for the same reason.
Thus it is likely that the Grade Six Assessment will be with us at least for the foreseeable future. Whatever its limitations, it nevertheless does provide a tool, albeit a fairly crude one, for a more public appraisal of how the education system is functioning than is furnished by any other assessment or exam. This is because parents regard it as being critical to their children’s future, although it might be noted in passing that in many instances it may be a good deal less critical than they think. Be that as it may, the Grade Six Assessment obliges the ordinarily uncommunicative Ministry of Education to impart more details than it would otherwise feel disposed to do.
While the high-flyers deserve all the credit they are given, it is not their achievement which gives the nation an insight into how the system as a whole is performing. It is the pass rates for the entire cohort, and where those are concerned, as stated above, there is not a great deal of room for optimism. As also mentioned earlier, it was Maths which was the only subject showing improvement from last year, moving from a 38.3% pass rate to 42%. Minister Nicolette Henry made the most of this modest increase across all regions, attributing it to the Emergency Mathe-matics Intervention Plan, while Chief Education Officer Marcel Hutson told the media that the recent intense focus on Maths had maybe had a deleterious effect on the other subjects. That hypothesis, it might be said, would seem unlikely.
While the Maths results in general may have seen an upswing, it was certainly not in a dramatic way, although the Minister waxed particularly lyrical about Regions Eight, Two and Three, the first of which recorded a figure of 19.1%, while the other two registered 38.3% and 51.7%, respectively. And for anyone who failed to be impressed by Region Eight’s achievement in Maths, the Minister emphasised that the Region had doubled its pass rate in relation to last year.
Where the other three subjects across the Regions were concerned, English recorded a pass rate of 57.4% as opposed to last year’s 60.6%; while only 42.4% of Science candidates secured more than 50% as against last year’s entrants who obtained 46.8%. In the case of Social Studies only 39% passed, in comparison with 46.1% in 2018. Where the latter subject was concerned, this was the lowest result in six years.
Not so many years ago the Social Studies paper left a great deal to be desired; it was full of inaccuracies and crammed with dry-as-dust inconsequential facts (for primary school children, at least) such as the structure of Caricom and its various agencies. That might have had at least recognition status for city children, but would have been less familiar to rural ones, and completely alien to those in the interior. The environment in which the Indigenous people move, for example, is quite different from that on the coast, and while the paper always had a component about the making of cassava bread (to give one example), there was little in a real sense which truly conveyed the kind of world in which they lived or the flora and fauna which made up that world. If there have been no changes to that paper, it would hardly be surprising if the Social Studies exam would seem foreign to them and they would perform poorly.
The Minister was all effervescence about candidates in ten of the eleven education districts being “able to secure places at the top five secondary schools in the capital city of our beautiful country.” She went on to say that this was “a good sign and certainly an indicator that reducing the disparities in education delivery between the hinterland and the coastland region is beginning to take some form.” It can only be remarked that she is either misinformed or else is unable to face reality; interior schools in general performed considerably worse than coastal ones did. Region One in particular, where 978 candidates sat the exam, had the lowest pass rates in every paper. Regions Seven, Eight and Nine also turned in below-average results.
In another area where she seemed subject to a fit of escapism, she asserted that there had been “more competition between the public and private schools for top positions.” However, as our report last week pointed out, the data did not confirm her assumption, since less than 30% of the 166 students in the top 1% attended a public primary school. Last year, the situation was little different.
On an arguably more positive note, Ms Henry did tell the media that over the last five years the number of candidates who had scored below 20% had been decreasing. However, she presented no statistics to support her statement, and did not even give a figure for this year alone. It is important that we are told what proportion of the complement recorded less than 20%, and whether it was that they could not comprehend the questions, and/or whether they appeared to be illiterate. This level of information has been supplied to the public before, most notably when Mr Shaik Baksh was Minister of Education. What is the present Minister afraid of? Why can citizens not be told what the true situation is, rather than what Ms Henry would like it to be? Education should not be a political issue; it is everyone’s business.
The difference between private and public schools in terms of results, the gap between the hinterland and coastal schools, and the general failure to raise standards across the board would seem to suggest that this country’s perennial problem – a shortage of quality teachers – has not found anything like a resolution. There will be many factors affecting education both directly and indirectly, but the single most important one is the calibre of the teachers. Until the government – any government – can offer remuneration to make the teaching profession attractive to the best, progress will be slow no matter how many ‘Interventions’ there are.
Finally, it always has to be remembered that however inspired the reforms or the teaching, good results across an entire cohort are not going to come immediately; education is a cumulative process, which starts well before Grade Six.
