Plea to CXC for exams adjustment

A group of students lobbying for the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) to make adjustments to this year’s examinations given the current COVID-19 environment is calling on the Ministry of Education to do more to address their concerns.

The Voice of the Students group, in response to last Thursday’s press conference when Minister of Education Santia Bradshaw announced the resumption of face-to-face learning from next term, is accusing the minister of placing the spotlight on younger students preparing for the 11-Plus examination, but failing to acknowledge that the older students are also undergoing the same, if not worse, mental stress from the experience in the online environment.

The group said in a statement that the Ministry of Education and CXC are fully aware of the impact that the online environment has had on students and teachers, but yet they persist in giving the CXC students all three components of the exams.

“The only anchor to the sanity of the students was the assumption that the Ministry of Education would have the best interest of the future of Barbados at heart. This year we, the Voice of the Students of Barbados, reached out to you and the CXC organisation before the exams. However, it seems as if our cries have fallen upon deaf ears and that our opinions and suggestions have been overlooked,” the statement read.

The group also indicated that while pleasing all stakeholders is not an easy task, it must be noted that despite CXC having several options from which to choose, including marking students on the School Based Assessments (SBAs) along with Paper 1, it still chose to assign all three components to students sitting the 2021 examinations.

The group argued that giving students the option of doing the exams next year does not change the impact of the pandemic or anything that came with it.

“There is no denying under normal conditions we the students would have no problem with complying with all three components. But under these questionable conditions, giving us more time is not a reasonable solution. Our survey showed that 56.4 per cent of the students asked for us to be marked on the SBA and Paper 1 alone. Last year showed the students’ capability to adapt to the situations and CXC’s lack thereof, to our knowledge,” the statement read.

The group is encouraging the Ministry of Education to conduct its own survey asking all the students that can be reached via email about their struggles and what CXC examination format would be most efficient this year.

“But to the fellow students that support us regardless of the outcome by the date of the exams, it is clear we are no more than a number in the system and a statistic in their calculations. We the students have to look out for one another and by now we should all know this. There is still time to make wrong actions just. Please use what time you have left wisely because at the end of the day these examinations are critical to our personal and professional development as citizens of Barbados.”

And while Minister Bradshaw also spoke about the ministry making provisions for students to speak to therapists and counsellors, the Voice of the Students noted that therapy cannot fix the shattered expectations and dreams of the children whose mental health can be impacted for the rest of their lives.
(AH)