We heard and read the words of Minister of Education Santia Bradshaw earlier this week and we, like many Barbadians, are puzzled.
The minister assured “worried’ Barbadians that a date for the Barbados Secondary School Entrance Examination, known more commonly as the 11-plus, will be announced within the next two weeks.
Bradshaw, who was speaking at the Barbados Labour Party’s virtual conference said: “Don’t worry about the 11-plus because I know many people worry about the 11-plus. I told the country we were going to do the assessments on the children and the assessments are underway and I give the assurance that within the next two weeks or sooner we will have a position as far as the 11-plus date is concerned. That is our commitment to you.”
And although there was talk weeks ago of moving ahead with the exam, we were quietly hoping that good sense would prevail.
But is this the same Education Minister who revealed in 2020 that the 11-plus would be no more.
She declared: “We are hoping that this would be the last cohort of students that will participate in the 11-plus examination, and if that is the case, then once we start in March it is intended that we spend a few months in discussion with the entire country and be able to formulate a programme going forward for implementation in 2021.”
The minister, flanked by ministry officials, made this statement in the well of the House of Assembly during debate on the 2020/2021 Estimates.
The most profound and telling statement was when the minister admitted that the current format of the entrance exam had failed our students.
“I believe that we are bright enough as a society to recognise when something is not working. I also believe that we are also bright enough to recognise that there are other systems in existence that we can draw from.”
But smack dead in the middle of a pandemic when there has been minimal face-to-face teaching; where some of our students still do not have access to devices; where much time has been lost and little in the syllabus covered, the ministry of education appears comfortable that the only way to assess our country’s children is by sitting the 11-plus exam.
That is why we echo the sentiments of Professor S Joel Warrican, Director of the School of Education at UWI Cave Hill, who said it is hypocritical for the Governments to press the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) to respond to the plight of secondary school students when they are bent on staging national primary exit exams.
The professor added that while everyone was busy pointing to the plight of the secondary-school age students and the perceived injustice being dealt to them by CXC they are “overlooking another injustice wrought by others in a different quarter”.
He said: “Here I am speaking of the injustice perpetuated by said Ministries of Education that, in the face of all the trauma, have still found a way of ensuring that primary school students write the common entrance examination (known by different names in different countries in the region, but the same beast!).
“Ministries of Education are finding it convenient and safe for these children to return to in-person classes in schools in this, the third term of the academic year so that they can be ‘adequately’ prepared to write this ‘screening’ test.”
This begs the question. Why is our minister and by extension her ministry pushing for an exam this year? Why, after declaring last year, prior to the pandemic, that it was not serving our students?
If nothing else, the COVID-19 pandemic provides the perfect time for this exam to be shelved and reviewed or discontinued. Why is the Ministry of Education willing to subject our students to this grave injustice?
The pandemic has taken a toll on school children as much as it has the adults. The routine life they know of going to school to learn, play and gain social skills was abruptly suspended for long periods of time.
Whether we want to hear it or say it, some of these students have to readjust to formal teaching long before they can handle any form of assessment.
What the 11-plus will do is lead many of them from one traumatic experience into another. By way of focus, prominence and tradition, this society already places extra attention on this particular exam, thereby adding immense pressure to the situation. Teachers and parents alike are guilty of making our young ones believe that life starts and ends the day they sit the 11-plus.
Many live vicariously through their charges only seeking bragging rights on the day the results are known. In Barbados, the 11-plus period is one of the most glaring displays of hypocrisy and deceit. Teachers and parents who know full well that the mark a student receives or the school he or she gains entry into, does not define who they truly are. Yet adults continually perpetuate that myth.
What the 11-plus serves to do is divide our children in the most unhealthy way. Annually we celebrate the top achievers, paying little attention to the student who worked tirelessly and oft times with little added resources to move his 15 per cent average to 60 per cent. Well, if that isn’t an amazing feat, maybe nothing is.
Perhaps educator Leslie Lett said it best when commenting on the 11-plus back in 2019: “We have to realise what this is. Whether we like it or not, it is producing an educational apartheid. This 11-plus exam is anything but equitable.”
Hopefully someday, the powers in the Ministry of Education will not only come to this realisation but move swiftly to remedy the situation.
Just not this year. Again.
