‘Old and outdated’

The Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) wants a major overhaul of the “old” and “outdated” primary school curriculum which does not even take into consideration the internet as a tool.

In an interview with Barbados TODAY, the union’s first vice president Julian Pierre said the curriculum was not up-to-date with the societal and developmental realities in Barbados and was in fact void.

“The curriculum of Barbados is still in draft since the year 2000, meaning that it has not been adopted by the Parliament of Barbados. Since then, we have gone through so many technological and societal changes and advancements that you would appreciate that there are many teachers now, who will use it just as a guideline.

“Every idea, every style of teaching that a teacher uses in school is either envisioned by the principal or the teacher for their individual classes,” he said. “I think that the public of Barbados needs to appreciate that we are using old, outdated information in trying to create the new style of child in a new environment of learning.

“An environment where there is more audio visual and less books. There are so many different accents and the information can show you the world using the internet. None of that is mentioned in any subject for any syllabus.The internet is not even a resource listed. It is that old.”

Pierre said this was a major area of contention when the union met with the Ministry of Education over the years but to date nothing has been done to address the issue.

“We have brought this up at every meeting. We even brought it up on the Down to BrassTacks call-in programme. We reminded them (education officials) in early October during our last meeting with them. We would have reminded them because they want to stop the common entrance. They mentioned [the introduction of] middle school but let us start at the beginning.”

The union official said Barbados was 22 years behind the eight ball and therefore cannot address the concept of middle school with such an archaic system.

Last week BUT president Rudy Lovell urged Government to pause its plans to abolish the 11-plus exam and instead focus on implementing measures to address “severe” learning deficiencies being seen among Class 4 students.

He said there was a “vast” number of students entering secondary school with “shocking” deficiencies, including inability to spell their names and even form letters properly.

He insisted that the Ministry of Education fix these issues before changing the method used to transition students from primary to secondary school.

Pierre told Barbados TODAY that the curriculum ought to be transformed and other testing modalities other than written exams be incorporated into the new version.

“We recognise that children learn in different ways. There are different styles of teaching, the same way there are different styles of testing. If we continue with this writing test, where we know there are many children that cannot read, it does not mean that they don’t have a level of intelligence or knowledge of a particular subject matter. If we continue to test by writing they will always fail; but it does not mean that because they fail that they do not know.”

He continued: “For instance, in special needs, obviously some children need to test orally. If you tell them to write they will fail. We have some students who will need readers, some who will need writers. I think if we adopt the practices of special needs assessment across the mainstream, you will see that many more students will pass. We just need to cater to their needs”.

sheriabrathwaite@barbadostoday.bb