#BTColumn – Leave the 11+ alone

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

COVID-19 has shown up all the inefficiencies in the way we do business. No longer can our cricketers polish the ball with their spit. No longer is getting food delivered to your house an impossibility. And no longer can we stuff 30-plus children into a classroom.

As teachers prepare for back-to-school, a major part of the discussion is how to accommodate in-person learning while maintaining the health protocols. The irony of this situation is that the fundamental problem is not one caused by COVID-19. The fundamental problem is something that teachers have been highlighting for the past 15 years. The class sizes are too big.

There are too many children in a class set and too little space to physically distance. In most secondary schools, a form ranges from 25 to 35 students. Even in sixth form classes, the student complement ranges from 12 to 25. To put this into perspective, 20 years ago the maximum number of students in a sixth form class used to be 15 and the maximum number of students in other year levels used to be 20 per class. Now that physical distancing is a requirement, most classrooms cannot hold more than ten students. When teachers highlighted this issue in the past, they were berated for “not wanting to do their job.” But any parent with more than one child knows that the more children you have in your care, the less care you can give to each individual child. That is to say, within the educational setting, the size of a class impacts the learning of the child.

Every year in the aftermath of the Common Entrance Exam, there is always a lot of debate around the utility and effectiveness of the exam. Those who are keen to dismantle it always point to how poorly special needs students perform and how society vilifies children who pass for ‘lower schools.’

I will address the second point first. Even in the articulation of the argument, the wording indicates that the problem is not with the exam. The exam does not vilify the children, the society does. The exam does not tell the children they are ‘dumpsy’ or that the school they have passed to is ‘bad’; the people around them do.

The Common Entrance Exam is an abstract artefact incapable of lobbying verbal condemnation on a child. It is also incapable of praising or affirming a child. These are things that only people can do. The truth is that the society vilifies the children. Therefore, the society, that is each of us individually, is what needs to be fixed.

Now to the first point. It is true, special needs students, who have not been given the proper assistance, perform poorly on the exam. However, again, the problem does not lie with the exam. The problem lies with the lack of additional assistance. And this problem finds its genesis in the same fundamental issue that teachers have been highlighting for the past 15 years. The class sizes are too big.

We boast as Barbadians of how highly educated and intelligent we are and how competent and skilled our professionals are. Barbadian teachers are very educated, having both university degrees and teaching certification. There are a lot of highly trained, very skilled, passionate teachers within the public education sector. However, no amount of training and no amount of passion can artificially manufacture time. Time is all teachers need to address the challenges of children with learning difficulties. They need to be able to spend time with the children one-on-one or in small groups, and here the word ‘small’ means a group of no more than three, to pinpoint the area of weakness and craft personalized strategies to help the child. In a class of 35 students, that is impossible.

There is a misconception that children with learning difficulties cannot perform well on the Common Entrance Exam. This is a fallacy. There are children with ADHD and dyslexia at ‘top’ schools. This is known because the children’s parents take the time to call and or write the school to inform teachers. They take the time to follow-up with teachers on their child’s behaviour and performance. They take the time to assist their child with schoolwork. If our interest is really helping the children, and not just making change for change’s sake, then doing away with the 11+ is needless. All that needs to be done is to reduce the class sizes.

Jade Gibbons is an arts and business graduate with a keen interest in social issues and film-making