BUT wants answers on extra tuition for students

President of the Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) Pedro Shepherd says the Ministry of Education must address some logistical issues surrounding the decision to allow students who are not ready for next week’s Barbados Secondary Schools Entrance Examination (BSSEE) to take an alternative test at a later date.

Last Friday, just one day after 27 Class 4 students at St Jude’s Primary School were quarantined after two students tested positive for COVID-19, Acting Deputy Chief Education Officer for Schools, Glyne Price announced at a press conference that those students not properly prepared for the July 28 exam would be given the opportunity to sit an alternative “somewhere between the 28th of July and the 1st of September”.

However, Shepherd told Barbados TODAY that the Ministry must say who will tutor the students who sit the substitute exam, considering that teachers have already decided to give extra tuition for Class 4 students until July 28, not factoring in the possible occurrence of COVID-19 cases among these students.

“But it appears as though there has been a rapid increase in COVID cases among Class 4 students once the term ended and students went into the extra time. I am not linking the two. I don’t know what the possible reason is, but I am hearing on almost a weekly basis, two or three Class 4 students coming down with COVID,” Shepherd said.

“We had the situation with St Jude’s where an entire class went into quarantine and that, of course, would affect their tuition for that period. And, again today I heard of another case where another Class 4 student at a school in the north has COVID and that now is under investigation on whether that person came into contact with other Class 4 students or it is just an isolated case.”

Shepherd said that beyond July 28, teachers might have to continue teaching students who deferred the exam, until September 1, and there may be a situation this year where some Class 4 teachers would have had to give up their entire summer vacation.

“We can also have a situation where the teachers teach up to the 28th, and those who cannot take the exam on the 28th would just have that time without tuition until September 1, or whenever they take the examination.

“But we know that that is going to be an issue because students have to be constantly doing a lot of repetition and practice to keep the brains turning over and keep the children prepared, so to speak. So, we cannot allow the students beyond the 28th not to be taught.

“So, how are we going to arrange for them to be taught? Is it going to be the normal class teachers? Or, are we going to bring in volunteers to home school or do something until the students take the examinations?” Shepherd said.

He also questioned whether the workers at the School Meals Department will be required to function to feed students who will be at school beyond July 28.

Shepherd suggested that thought must also go into when and how the exam papers written by the students who will be taking the exam on July 28 will be corrected.

Shepherd also questioned how the choice of schools would be sorted in time to allow students to be ready for school on September 20.

The BUT president said: “Would that give secondary schools enough time to prepare the paperwork, and the parents enough time to get the school clothes and textbooks in place? So, it is not a straightforward situation but I believe that the Ministry is currently, to use a Bajan phrase, thinking on its feet. And as situations crop up, I believe that they are working on some solution to those particular problems.

“It is unfortunate that we had to go down to this period because we were asking for the exam to be written before school break and even if we didn’t get it before school broke, we were asking for it to be the first week of the vacation. Maybe, if we had adhered to some of those suggestions then we might not have been in this particular predicament. But it is what it is and we will have to work with it as it unfolds.” (anestahenry@barbadostoday.bb)