#BTColumn – CXC must do the right thing

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by this author are their own and do not represent the official position of the Barbados Today.

by Suleiman Bulbulia

The Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) taught students across the Caribbean a very important lesson this past week: ‘Stand up for what is right!’

Sir Hilary Beckles, Chairman of CXC, should be proud that our region’s young people are following in his footsteps. As a younger man he too stood up for what were injustices and unfairness in the system. And he continues to do so for reparatory justice.

We often speak of our education system failing many of our youth, Sadly, we are now consumed with our examination system failing many of our students.

One placard at the recent student and supporters’ marches outside the CXC Headquarters couldn’t have made the message clearer, “I should be in class studying…”

For those amongst us who are eager to express dismay and disgust at young people when they involve themselves in anti-social and violent behavior should now be at the forefront standing in solidarity with these students who have been disadvantaged in their examinations results. And who have chosen the route of expressing their right to stand up for what is fair and just.

Just as many who watch and share videos of young people in fights and mayhem, go ahead now and share the videos of these brave young students taking on the system for what is their future.

I feel the pain and the emotional anguish of these students, teachers and parents who have to deal with this. One emotional parent whose child sat exams last year and won a scholarship said she understands fully what parents are going through.

For many families in the Caribbean educational success is their only means out of economic distress and so they sacrifice much to ensure their children do their best and get an education and pass their exams so they can aim for a scholarship.

Having worked and given up much these young men and women see their dreams and hard-work evaporate due to poor examination results not by their own doing but by some mess up or change in the examination system.

This is completely inexcusable.

A parent who is also a teacher in Trinidad called me to find out what was happening in Barbados. She added me to a Trinidad WhatsApp Group chat, in which the limit of the number of members have now been reached, and is made up of parents, students and teachers there.

The stories are painful to hear. There are straight A students for most of their educational lives but this year received lower and failing grades in their CAPE and CSEC examinations. And this is repeated across the region.

Something is fundamentally wrong yet CXC’s Registrar seemingly downplays the numerous and growing calls for full investigation into this debacle.

We in the Caribbean have often lamented the declining learning abilities of many of our young ones in this region.
Yet we can find ourselves confronted with this situation where those young persons who have sacrificed and given their all in their educational pursuits are thrown under the bus.

What message is this sending to them and to others?

I agree for years you have produced and given the region an examination system that allowed for our region to be proud and be acceptable on the world stage. But you can’t rest on these laurels in the face of such damning evidence of something clearly gone wrong this year and pretend it doesn’t exist.

It can’t be business as usual. How is it that hundreds, if not thousands of students are crying out for a review and the response to them all is pay the fee and submit the necessary request?

Do we fully understand the emotional turmoil involved here? The lives and future of these students are at stake. Many, if not most, in this region depend on their education to lift them out of their economic situation.

Can you imagine the anguish having given your all, sacrificed everything, studied hard, given up your free time while your friends were out having ‘good times’ only to be given a grade that is way below what you, your teachers and your parents know you are capable of?

A grade that will definitely hamper your chances of getting that scholarship or exhibition or even entry into a tertiary institution of your choice. I get it that there will always be a percentage of those who do everything right but still fail or get a lower grade, but certainly not in the numbers seen this year.

This is playing with the lives of students and is inexcusable. I listened to the media conference with the CXC Registrar last Friday and appalling is too mild a description for me to several of the responses he gave reporters’ from across the region.

CARICOM Ministers of Education and if necessary, CARICOM leaders as well, must take up this fight. It cannot be the students alone who are made to carry this struggle.

This story out of the UK in August this year should make CXC open their eyes and minds to doing what is right by the students.

“In a U-turn after days of criticism, the British government on Monday scrapped an exam-grading policy that was set to deprive thousands of graduating high school students — especially more disadvantaged ones — of places at universities.

Roger Taylor, chairman of UK exam regulator Ofqual, said the use of an algorithm to predict the results of exams that were cancelled by the coronavirus pandemic had caused “real anguish and damaged public confidence.”

“It has not been an acceptable experience for young people,” he said. “I would like to say sorry.”

Universities in the UK offer final-year high school students places based on grades predicted by their teachers. Admission is contingent on the results of final exams, known as A Levels.

This year, with schools largely shut since March and no exams, education authorities in England ran the predicted grades through an algorithm, intended to standardize results, that compared them with schools’ past performance. That meant high-achieving students at under-performing schools, many in deprived areas, saw their marks downgraded, while students at above-average schools kept their predicted grades.

Hundreds of students have held protests, calling the results an injustice, and lawmakers were inundated with complaints from angry parents.”

The lessons learnt this past week for our region’s youth must not be that after hard-work, dedication and personal sacrifice the results are failing grades and a refusal to listen to concerns, the lessons must be that willingness to stand up for what is right, fair and just and ensure the correction of the mistakes that got us here.

CXC needs to do right by our students.

Suleiman Bulbulia is a Justice of the Peace; Secretary of the Barbados Muslim Association; Muslim Chaplain at the U.W.I, Cave Hill Campus and Chair, Barbados Childhood Obesity Prevention Coalition. Email: suleimanbulbulia@hotmail.com