Time to assess Govt school teachers’ performance – Broomes

Veteran educator Jeff Broomes says the time has come to stop the talk about students at private schools outperforming their counterparts at public primary institutions in the annual Common Entrance Examination and start holding teachers accountable for students’ performance.

Broomes told Barbados TODAY that while he is bracing for a backlash for his comments, no one can change his belief that teachers at private schools are forced to perform and produce good results because their livelihoods depend on it.

He said the Ministry of Education must start evaluating teachers in the public education system if the results are to change.

“The performance of the private schools does not in any way surprise me. One, I think the classes are smaller at private schools so teaching can be more focused. Two, I think they get the necessary resources that they require in a more timely fashion and three, which will prove to be the most controversial is, I think the level of accountability for success is higher. Teachers at private schools are held to higher standards of accountability than public schools obviously because they can be fired a lot easier than public school teachers can be fired if they are not performing,” he said.

The retired educator who still offers private tutoring sessions noted that at one point during his 14-year stint as a principal, he publicly made numerous calls for annual teacher evaluations to be taken more seriously.

He said when he served as principal, he made several complaints to the Ministry of Education regarding the performance and behaviour of teachers, but the reports were never investigated nor followed through.

“After a time I stopped. I mean, I was just wasting my time. We worked hard and we were in conjunction with the unions and we have a system for annual teacher evaluation which I do not think is being done properly. There is nothing that comes out of it. Principals write and I do not see anything substantial coming out of it, which was surely my experience. We should be evaluating their performance, punctuality, professionalism, dress, results, and all different things. It is a whole system,” he said.

Last week Tuesday, while presenting an analysis of the results and findings for this year’s examination, Minister of Education Santia Bradshaw noted that the majority of the 44 public schools, continue to perform below the national mean, whereas the majority of 23 private schools has been performing above the national mean.

“The majority of public schools has consistently scored below the national mean over the last three years. Data for the private schools reveal that 19 private schools scored above the national mean for English, while only six scored below for 2018. The data also shows that in 2019 and 2020, 21 and 23 private schools respectively scored above the mean and eight and six respectively scored below the mean. Thus, it can be noted that the majority of private schools have scored above the national mean over the last three years,” Bradshaw said during a press conference at the ministry.

Meanwhile, Broomes said teachers must understand that they do not know it all, and should at times call on each other for assistance. He also noted that alumni of schools must be prepared to give the schools they attended support through sponsorships.

He also indicated that persons from the middle and upper classes send their children to private schools and are financially equipped to provide the necessary resources and materials to give them the extra boost to succeed in all areas of their school life.

“You would find the schools that match them [private schools] would be schools like Charles F. Broomes and Wilkie Cumberbatch Primary who get the preferred choices of children from outside the area,” Broomes said. anestahenry@barbadostoday.bb