Teachers’ unions and lobby group say pandemic, volcano should force exam delay

The two main teachers’ trade unions are banking on the expression of concern from UNICEF about this year’s Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE) to push the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) to reform the exams as they have been prescribing for more than a year.

The Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union (BSTU) on Tuesday noted that while Minister of Education Santia Bradshaw has recently been advocating for much-needed adjustments to the structure of this year’s exams, she has failed to attract the support of her regional counterparts.

Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) president Pedro Shepherd contends that with just days remaining before the planned sitting, it was simply a case of too little, too late to revive what is already a “lost” school year.

In a statement Monday, UNICEF’s top officials in Barbados, Belize, Jamaica and Guyana called for urgent interventions from regional Ministries of Education to ensure that students are not disadvantaged by seemingly rigid policies of the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC).

BSTU President Mary Redman declared that the mere fact that UNICEF had found it necessary to intervene was a “very sad reflection” of the current state of the regional examining body.

But she added that the statements made are consistent with BSTU positions from as early as April 2020 about the
need for more creativity and flexibility in the midst of a COVID-19 environment, which, this year, has been exacerbated for many by the La Soufriere Volcano eruptions in St Vincent and the Grenadines.

“Perhaps in too typical a fashion, the Caribbean people don’t value what comes from within and just as we have already stated, those facts will now carry some weight, having been gleaned from an international source,” Redman told Barbados TODAY.

Months ago, The BSTU wrote the requisite regional bodies calling for a greater element of choice in relation to the exam questions students are required to answer. The union also called for students to be allowed to defer their fifth form year, receive extensions for submitting school-based assessments (SBA) and more recently, that Paper 1 be removed from the exam.

The BSTU has also recently recommended that exam dates be delayed by three weeks to facilitate a July start for CSEC and CAPE assessments.

“These recommendations and the rationale for them have been made to CXC in meetings, through correspondence and in press conferences,” Redman added. “And even though there has been an attempt at some modification by CXC, those modifications have been made in a manner still as not to cause too much disruption to CXC’s operation, and they have not been done with enough consideration of the ongoing realities of Caribbean students and teachers in an ongoing pandemic.”

The BSTU leader also expressed disappointment at reports that Caribbean education ministers have not been forceful enough in the interest of students at the level of the CARICOM Council for Human and Social Development (COHSOD)

“We are aware that more recently, our minister has attempted to champion the cause in relation to the modifications that need to be made, but reportedly too many others have been satisfied to continue, sit back and allow CXC free reign to the detriment of Caribbean students,” the union president explained.

“Many students are going into the 2021 examinations with plenty, plenty exam concerns unaddressed, and this whole matter continues to be a travesty on too many levels,” the statement added.

For his part, the BUT president pledged to keep a close eye on whether the Government’s response to the concerns expressed by UNICEF mirrors its response to domestic and regional stakeholders.

“When the unions were calling on CXC to make the necessary adjustments and so on, we never got the support of the government or the ministry of education. I know the BSTU has fought tooth and nail here in Barbados and through the CUT,” Shepherd told Barbados TODAY.

“At the outset, I had said that we needed to put off all of those examinations and I was ignored, so I will await the response of our ministry of education to this latest recommendation from UNICEF which it holds so dear to its chest.

“They needed to make the decision months ago to defer all exams and call this year a lost year in relation to the quality of teaching and so on that we would have had. Allow students to repeat the year and see if we can get mastery if that is indeed possible. But I think there are going to be too many gaps in these children’s education going forward.”

In a press statement last Friday, CXC revealed it would host a press conference by Wednesday to give a final update on the 2021 exams.

The latest developments have also attracted the ire of the spokesperson and coordinator for the Group of Concerned Parents of Barbados, Paula-Anne Moore.

She said the fact that UNICEF found it necessary to intervene showed the severity of the situation.

“The UNICEF statement on the 2021 CXC exam plans is nothing less than an international embarrassment of our region. It demonstrates what our regional coalition has been saying for eight months; the fundamental causes of the 2020 exam fiasco unaddressed have resulted in a continued lack of care for our innocent children,” Moore declared.

She lamented that at the 11th hour, days before exams start, students and teachers are on an emotional rollercoaster of uncertainty while CXC did little to improve their concerns.

“The cosmetic changes made by CXC are merely laughable PR exercises and contrast profoundly with the changes that countries worldwide made and publicly communicated months ago in response to the pandemic crisis and with the stated focus, the care and concern of innocent children. We thank our Minister of Education, the Caribbean Union of Teachers and now UNICEF for forcefully advocating on the regional stage the students’ cause.

“We hope that a reasonable solution can be found to the 2021 assessments that does not further disadvantage students, some of whom are emotionally fragile. This pandemic has revealed comorbidities in the governance of CARICOM public education. It is our great hope that CARICOM holds CXC accountable finally and an independent oversight body is established to address these clear deficiencies revealed in 2020 and 2021.”

In a joint press statement with student advocate and liaison, Khaleel Kothdiwala, Moore gave CXC notice that the postponement of exams for “a few weeks” would not suffice.

They pointed to a COVID-19 upsurge in Trinidad and Tobago resulting in per capita infection rates similar to India’s, the devastation of St Vincent and the Grenadines from the La Soufriere volcano’s eruption in April and the major disruptions in Barbados, St Lucia, Antigua and Grenada as a result of the ash cloud from the eruption as events that CXC ought to take into consideration.

“We humbly posit that merely delaying for a few weeks, high-stakes, in-person exams (with the standard pre-pandemic structure, same-number of in-person exams and no reduction in syllabi) is a woefully inadequate response to these multiple, major national crises and unique in comparison with global public education responses,” the statement read.

(kareemsmith@barbadostoday.bb)

(randybennett@barbadostoday.bb)