Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jul 19, 2010 News
– Minister Shaik Baksh
Minister of Education, Shaik Baksh says that although children are being promoted irrespective of their performance, there are interventions in place to ensure that performance is maintained.
But parents and teachers have raised a number of concerns about this new policy of the Ministry that comes into full force from September, the beginning of the 2010/2011 school year.
Some teachers say that the new policy removes the need for students to work as hard as possible since they know that come the end of the school year, they will move ahead to the next grade level.
Meanwhile, there are other concerns such as whether a child who was unable handle the work in one grade will be able to take on the work at a higher grade level.
Another is whether the students’ weaknesses will build up over time in a cumulative effect, resulting in students leaving school without a large number of the skill sets that they need for matriculation.
The Minister did say, however, that the policy does not have schools promoting the students ‘willy-nilly’.
Instead, there is going to be constant remediation throughout the school system to catch the students at all stages of their education and to address any issues should there be any.
The question was raised in Parliament by opposition member Mr. Everall Franklin.
In responding to Franklin, Baksh, quoting from a circular said that “In its efforts to ensure that all students experience an acceptable level of success from the nursery level to the primary level no repetition should take place in any school effective from the new school term in September.”
According to Baksh, the reports generated after the grades two, four six and nine national assessments along with the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) exams should be fully utilized by teaching and ministry staff to plan and implement remediation programmes.
He said that surveys show that repetition is not a remedy for slow learners or learners who fail their exams since the dropout rates among these types of students are very high. The surveys indicate, he said, that there is a seven percent drop-out rate for students across grades seven through nine who have been through a grade retention.
He also pointed out that the Ministry is strengthening assessments at the grades two and four levels and are moving towards remediation for any weaknesses discovered therein. There will also be a grade four literacy certificate. All of these are measures which according to the Minister will bring pressure to bear on the school system by capturing all of the children experiencing trouble at grades two, three, four and above.
Other measures include continuous training of teachers in the literacy program and additional initiatives such as the literacy hour and the accelerated reading approach. Baksh noted that most of the challenges at the Secondary level stem from issues at the Primary level where there is a greater need for remediation.
And he went on to point out that as a result of all of these measures there is continuous remediation throughout the school system.
In some areas, especially the hinterland locations, schools are voluntarily taking up the work before they are required to do so.
A number of these schools have launched their remedial hour where additional work is done to bolster and improve on the skills that some of the children may not have mastered during the regular school hours.Minister Baksh said he is “hoping that within the shortest possible time span – two to three years, these interventions will take hold and it will therefore improve learning outcomes at the primary level.”
In further defense of his position, he quoted from a UNESCO report on education, which claims that there is no evidence to show that repetition is a more effective way to help the low achiever as opposed to automatic promotion. In fact the report went on to state that repeating a tends to impact adversely on their self-esteem and confidence. The report also stated that despite efforts to portray repetition in a constructive light, it invariably ends up causing a number of issues later on, one of them being an increase in drop-out rates.
According to the report, a single grade retention increases the likelihood of dropping out of school to a 40 percent possibility while another retention increases that likelihood to almost 90 percent.
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