NOW THAT THE competition for secondary school places has ended, it is necessary to provide some guidance for all of our students. We commend Minister of Education Ronald Jones for his efforts in this regard.
Our primary school graduates will be entering our secondary schools having understood the primary school academic requirements to varying levels. Some academically stronger students will find themselves among similar students in the “top” schools, while others will be distributed among the other schools based on their Common Entrance Examination performance.
However, all academically stronger students will be much better prepared for secondary school academic work than their classmates.
Our students have approximately five years before they are objectively examined again by the CXC. In the interim, they should learn to cooperate in order to achieve high levels of proficiency in their academics and sports. However, while talented sports students have a framework to assist less talented students for the benefit of the team, academically gifted students are not provided with a similar framework to fulfil their responsibilities to academically weaker students. We propose the following.
For all secondary school classes, the student’s final mark in each subject should be determined by multiplying his or her exam mark by the average percentage mark of the entire class. Further, this determined mark should be the only mark that is shown on the student’s end-of-term report.
Parents can get a measure of their child’s performance by the teacher’s comments. Therefore, like in sports, all students have an incentive to do better since they can appreciate how their individual performances can affect the whole class. Since we all have to cooperate to live on this small island, it is a critical lesson that should be learnt in our secondary schools.
Academically stronger students can only benefit from teaching challenging concepts to weaker students, and weaker students can only benefit from being taught by stronger students. Further, teachers can only be more fulfilled when teaching students who understand the underlying concepts, and the school can only benefit from graduating more successful students.
Therefore, there is no disadvantaged group by implementing this solution. We urge the minister and all secondary school principals to plan to implement this solution in the new September 2016 term.
– GRENVILLE PHILLIPS II, Founder, Solutions Barbados
