Cracks in 11-plus

ANY SYSTEM TO replace the 11-Plus examination must better cater to the needs of slow learners.This is the view of Archbishop of the Anglican Diocese John Holder who told the MIDWEEK NATION yesterday that since the island had a standard secondary curriculum, a primary system was needed to put children on a level playing field.“There is a lot of criticism of the 11-Plus, but I don’t think we have yet devised a system in Barbados that will help us to achieve what the 11-Plus has helped us to achieve. The challenge is to deal with the slower ones. “If you get a system, 11-Plus, 12-Plus or whatever you  call it, that will ensure that  all of the children are guided along at a pace that is comfortable for them, then that is all we want,” he said in an interview at his office in Henry’s Lane, St Michael.As the Archbishop reminisced on the days when the Anglican Church ran about 50 schools in Barbados, he commended Government administration of the educational system since it was taken from churches 60 to 70 years ago.“I think Government is doing an excellent job. You just need to send some of the ones that we have trained here to the rest of the world and they would be able to hold their own. We have a solid system,” Holder said.However, he lamented that fact that every eligible child was not taking the greatest advantage of the system, and he stressed that Government’s delivery of education needed optimised focus on assisting slower learners to make bigger academic strides. “The room for improvement is that we probably need to pay a bit more attention to ones who cannot travel as fast as the high flyers. We have a secondary system where all the schools follow the same syllabus.“We look at it over and over again, but we should pay some attention to how we can help the ones who are not as bright and as quick in the system so that the system itself does not become a disadvantage to them.”