Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
May 09, 2017 News
Although the Ministry of Education never officially put in place a policy titled ‘No Child Left Behind’, it has been one that has been referred to continually over the years. And the remarks relating to it has not been very flattering.
This is according to Former Chief Education Officer, Mr. Ed Caesar. Caesar was appointed to lead a Commission of Inquiry [COI] into the education system and in so doing was able to gain feedback countrywide about a number of issues within the system.
Among these was the very ‘policy’ in question. According to Caesar, “The communities have said that a system of ‘No Child Left Behind’ is the worst [to be put] in place. In other words parents have said, teachers have said [too], if a child is not performing, a child must not go on to the next grade.”
He added, “We have also said that should not happen, anyhow because if we monitor the programme and progress of children we will know right away when there are gaps in their learning and we will deal with that as teachers urgently because personally I don’t like the word remediation.”
“I think that you should avoid anything that sounds remedial…If we teach the way we are supposed to teach, if the supervisors supervise the way we should and we monitor our children’s progress to identify where they are slipping…we can address those urgently and quickly,” asserted Caesar.
The important thing, according to Caesar, is that inefficiencies should not be promoted by any stretch of the imagination. “We must not promote persons and extend the gaps [in the system]. The child doesn’t know one plus two equals three, neither does the child knows one plus zero equal one…that is how bad it gets,” said the COI Chairman.
He claimed to have long lamented the fact that “we haven’t crafted and created and solve that issue but we move the child forward so the child comes with problems and we can’t move forward and then we ask ourselves why are these young people not performing…[is it] because of our stupidity.”
But according to Caesar he is aware that Assistant Chief Education Office [Admin]. Ms. Donna Chapman, “has been trying all kinds of strange things” to arrest the prevailing state of affairs.
Even as Chapman made it clear that there is no policy called ‘No Child Left Behind’, she pointed out that the Ministry of Education has recognised that “we have to go back to that policy which is actually the Grade Retention or Repetition.”
She pointed out that at the level of the Education System’s Committee, “we are going to look at that circular again to see what we can come up with but obviously what is mentioned in that [COI] Report we will take into consideration as we review the policy.”
Although Chapman insisted that no moves was made to change the system, a circular issued by then Chief Education Officer, Olato Sam, in 2014 had instructed that secondary level schools prohibit the promotion of students who did not pass Mathematics and English.
In the same year the Ministry had moved to temporarily halt its Automatic Promotion but then Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand, insisted that it would have been in full effect the following year in a revised form.
The revised Policy should have seen all students who fail Mathematics and English becoming ineligible for promotion to a higher grade.
The Policy in its original form was implemented under the tenure of another former Minister of Education, Shaik Baksh, who had embraced the rationale that students should not be allowed to fail. This was in light of the fact that it was found that many failing students had diminished self esteem, and were either not striving to improve their performances, or dropping out of school altogether.
Moreover, Manickchand noted that Minister Baksh and his team at the time, decided to implement the ‘policy’
“They thought that the best thing to do was to send them (students) over, because when you kept them back they were ashamed…morale were being lowered and confidence levels were being shattered; it was those kinds of issues that the sector had faced,” explained Manickchand.
Of interest though, was that soon after the implementation of the Policy, the Ministry was able to retain approximately 5,000 more students (over a two-year period). This therefore, suggested that students were no longer opting to drop out as they were being granted passage through the grades even if they hadn’t passed the crucial subject areas of Mathematics and English.
Although retaining an increased number of students was seen as a plus for the sector, it was however, outweighed by a very daunting development which translated to some students becoming unruly to the extent that they refused to be taught.
This was seen as a downside to the Policy as, according to Minister Manickchand, it entailed a clause whereby students were promoted on the grounds that they attend remediation classes for the subject areas they had failed in the former Grade. Students were simply not adhering to the grounds of their promotion.
In fact, several teachers reported to the Ministry that students had become so malicious that they were refusing to do work they were assigned. “You can do what you want; I got to go over anyway,” were the comments teachers were hearing from some students.
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