The Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM) education system has been referred to as’ in crisis’ by the World Bank Director for the Caribbean in January, and as ‘in shambles’ by Prime Minister Mia Mottley in her capacity as Chair of the regional grouping during the February Heads of Government meeting.
We all agree that our own national education system is not fair and does not sufficiently serve the majority of our children’s needs. Those socio-economically disadvantaged, those differently-abled, those that require specialist learning assessment and support, those that have skill sets which are non-academic, are too often left behind and/or considered ‘second class’ students. Those that can thrive academically should not need a deeply entrenched private lessons industry at primary and secondary school to ensure success.
The literacy and numeracy skills of too many of our children, even after 12 or more years of schooling, are insufficient for them to function successfully in society, often with violent crime consequences.
It has become popular rhetoric, and therefore politically expedient, to promote the abolition of the BSSEE/11+ exam as a solution to these ills, perhaps with good reason. Much less comment has focused on the deficiencies in the seven years of primary school, often revealed in the 11+ exam’s performance of many primary school students and their schools.
These systemic deficiencies have led to the proliferation of private primary schools, and an increased number of private secondary schools, which is inherently unfair to the poor.
Clearly, considerable, commendable effort has resulted in the Education Transformation Proposals revealed by the then Ministry of Education Technical & Vocational Studies in 2023. The plans for universal primary school testing (sight, hearing and for neuro-divergency, inter alia) and mandatory pre-primary education are particularly excellent and are essential first steps in ‘levelling the playing field’.
However, too many of these proposals elicited significant concerns, from parental and other perspectives. Frankly, parental feedback was that there were more questions than answers.
Now that there is a new Ministry of Educational Transformation, we await official details on what is contemplated.
Anyone who has been involved in strategy development and change management projects, would know that if the change does not take into account, and specifically address prevailing cultural norms, that change will not have optimal buy-in from key stakeholders. A major change-management initiative, such as is being contemplated by the national transformation of our education system, also has to be grounded within feasible time, finance and other resource constraints. Education is a public service, but still also a business. A successful business service should accord with basic principles of project and change management.
True and effective stakeholder engagement is crucial for success. Parents will have to be convinced, not just promised, that there is a benefit to any major change that far outweighs the risk, cost and potential disruption of learning for an entire national education system.
Fulsome, early communication is fundamentally important for an issue so vitally central to every Bajan family
We also need to adjust our champagne aspirational tastes to our mauby pocket realities and address well-documented national implementation challenges in other projects much less complex than this proposed education transformation.
It is our view that the requisite fundamental improvements to our national education system, especially at the primary school level, can be made within the existing two-tier primary and secondary school structure, especially initially. This would be far less disruptive and less expensive.
This transformation needs a detailed, well-documented, phased 5 – 10-year timeline – after basic project management prerequisites are achieved. Clear targets and measures of success, with means for adjustments after regular and timely implementation review, should be included. Accountability mechanisms are essential to optimise success.
The 11+ exam can be reconfigured to reduce its negative attributes, but can still serve as a useful standardised assessment test, and/or primary school exit exam. We suggest extending its timing to the 10 – 13 age group, depending on readiness as assessed by teachers, parents and the student. Our culture is test-driven. That is our reality. It will be a generational change to make it otherwise, if it ever changes. Children hear they don’t have a test – best believe many won’t bother to study!
Secondary schools can indeed have a more mixed academic-ability intake, but presumably streaming of classes would still occur, as obtains in North American public systems. There is a place for specialised schools – creative arts, performing arts, sports and athletics, and academic.
We must be mindful of comparisons with the UK, US and Scandinavian education systems. All have far more resources than we do, as well as different cultural norms. The UK and US systems even more directly link school prestige with wealth – their more prestigious schools often are tuition-based. Many regions in the UK have reintroduced an entrance exam for those secondary schools which excel academically. We can review them, then, adapt, adopt and (become) adept’.
A cautionary tale: Bermuda is currently trying to reverse what some have deemed a disastrous education reform of nearly 30 years ago, where they too abolished their 11+ equivalent and introduced American-style middle schools. Result: parents who could afford, fled to private schools. There was a significant reduction in the prestige and reputation of the public secondary schools, which were left to those families who could not afford private school fees.
We parents welcome the national education transformation initiative to improve fairness in our education system and are anxious to collaborate to make it a feasible reality.
We also cannot rush implementation to meet unrealistic deadlines. Too much is at stake for our children.
Until then: ‘better the devil you know’.
Paula-Anne Moore is a parent advocate and spokesperson/coordinator of The Group of Concerned Parents, Barbados and The Caribbean Coalition for Exam Redress.
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