IN A FEW WEEKS the results of the Caribbean Examinations Council’s Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) will be made public. A great deal of attention will be focused on those students who excel, whether from sixth form schools orthe Barbados Community College (BCC).
It is reasonable and fair that much is made of the achievements of outstanding students, who must be encouraged to strive for excellence in their academic pursuits.
At the same time the students of the Samuel Jackman Prescod Polytechnic (SJPP) should also have known how they performed in this year’s examinations. But there will be little, if any, fanfare for them. In many ways they are still treated as the Cinderellas in this island’s educational and training system.
This is a most unfortunate situation, given the seismic changes taking place worldwide in education and training. The low priority we still place on technical and vocational education is out of step in a world where there is a demand for highly skilled people.
In Barbados we must change our attitude not just through rhetoric but with determined and deliberate action. Yes, we must continue to celebrate those who win Barbados Scholarships and Exhibitions, which are aspects of a time-proven and trusted tradition. Ideally, we should hope that with the recent expansion of sixth form education more students will meet the requirements for winning the prestigious Barbados Scholarship or the Exhibition.
We also hope that increasing numbers of BCC students will attain the grade point average that qualifies them for these awards. All things considered, it is to this country’s advantage to have an expansion in the number of students excelling at a high level.
But there should be no discriminatory approach by the Ministry of Education. SJPP students who achieve outstanding performances should be treated with the same level of appreciation and honour as their sixth form and BCC counterparts. The inferior treatment must end.
It is true that the administration at the polytechnic over the years has been responsible for the image issues the institution has faced. It has never placed any emphasis on the marketing and promotion of the outstanding achievers, seeming not to appreciate that the public needs to know of such successes. Public awareness is a sure way of stimulating even greater interest in the institution and lifting its profile.
So the appeal is to the Ministry of Education, even in these tough economic times, to set aside special awards for those very outstanding students at the SJPP who meet specified criteria. There must be ways of facilitating such studies to develop their pursuit of excellence.
The divide which once separated education and training is no longer relevant. The best way to show that we in Barbados understand this is by appropriately honouring all our outstanding students.