#BTColumn – Common Entrance results invalid

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

by Dr Garry Hornby and Dr Marcia Pilgrim

Recent statements in the media from Joel Warrican, Director of the School of Education at UWI Cave Hill (see Barbados TODAY on 27th May, 2021) and Faith Marshall-Harris, UNICEF Children’s Champion, have highlighted the blatant unfairness and lack of validity of basing secondary school transfer this year on the results of the Common Entrance Examination (CEE) that is due to be administered in a few weeks’ time.

The disruptions to schooling caused by Covid-19, and compounded by the volcanic ash fall, have been devastating to schooling for many children this year, but have provided a good reason and an ideal opportunity to get rid of the CEE and reform our education system to create one that provides an excellent education for all our young people, rather than just a minority of them.

Untold damage has been done over the past 50 years by the long-term negative effects of the Common Entrance Exam on the young people of Barbados, by determining their educational futures at age eleven, tacitly labelling most of them as failures.

Many of them would have accepted the label given them by the CEE, therefore did not get the most out of their education, and possibly became disaffected or even dropped out of school.

Allocating students to secondary schools based on the results of an 11 plus exam conducted in the next few months would clearly be even more unfair than has been the case in previous years. This is mostly because the disruption in schooling and the consequent inequities in preparation for the exam have been far greater than in past years.

This has been due to the differences between the support that wealthy and less well-off families have been able to provide whilst coping with the devastating impact of Covid-19 on children’s schooling and their parents’ employment. Therefore, the results of the CEE, if it goes ahead, will not provide a valid measure of their ability or achievement and therefore be grossly unfair to many children.

To go ahead with the CEE this year would be a travesty for the majority of children and stressful for all of them and their parents. So now would be the ideal time to break away from the colonial shackles imposed by the CEE and take up the challenge of abandoning this divisive selective system of secondary transfer in order to implement a system which is more egalitarian and effective for ensuring that ALL our young people get the best possible education. So, right now is an ideal time to begin to reform the education system.

Transformation of the education system by abandoning the system of selective secondary education based on the results of the 11 plus examination will involve adopting zoning as outlined below (discussed in more detail in our article for Barbados TODAY on 15th May 2019).

However, a key to its success will be the implementation of a comprehensive and rigorous policy for the education of children who experience difficulties learning in schools, due to their special needs or disabilities (as suggested in our article in Barbados TODAYon 4th June, 2019).

It will also require revamping curricula at both primary and secondary schools, to include more emphasis on continuous assessment, soft skills and vocational training, as suggested in our article in Barbados TODAY on 20th June 2019.

Quickest, fairest and most effective way to bring about change

The quickest, most feasible, equitable, and most effective way to improve transfer to secondary schools is to adopt a system of zoning for the transfer from primary to secondary schooling. Abandoning the 11 plus exam will require introducing a system for transfer from primary schools in which students will attend the secondary school nearest to where they live.

Bringing about non-selective secondary education in Barbados can be achieved by carefully organised geographical zoning which ensures that each secondary school has as broad a socio-economic spread as possible (as discussed in our article in Barbados TODAY on 7th September 2019).

Within this type of organisation, all children attend the secondary schools for which they are zoned from forms one through five and have a chance to gain entry to a sixth form college, which are increasingly popular in many countries and have been recommended for Barbados in the past, at around age 16 years, based on their CXC examination results.

All children transferring from primary schools in September 2021 would attend their nearest secondary schools with school zones worked out by the Ministry of Education in the next few months. Secondary schools would offer programs leading to CXC examinations, as well as more practical programs leading to vocational qualifications such as Caribbean Vocational Qualifications.

Students would then apply to get into sixth form college based on their passes and grades in the CXC examinations taken at the end of the fifth form year, or get into community college or polytechnic courses based on their performance on CVQs, or leave school to get jobs. It is suggested that, in the first instance, one secondary school, Harrison College, could, over a period of four years, be transformed into a sixth form college, so will not enrol first formers from 2021 onwards, and after four years will only teach students in their sixth form years who are undertaking advanced level CAPE courses.

This will mean that, from 2021, children will have five times greater chance of attending Harrison College than they do now, although this will be for just two years of sixth form study.

We have discussed the rationale for these changes in an article in the Journal of International and Comparative Education (Volume 7, issue 2, 2018) that is available free online or from hornbygarry@gmail.com.

The way forward that we have proposed will bring the Barbados education system up-to-date and on par with other countries that have reformed their education systems to bring about better outcomes for their young people.

In this way we can ensure that Barbados makes optimum use of its human capital by equipping our youth with the knowledge, attitudes and skills they need to take our country forward in the years ahead.

Five-year plan for implementing reforms

The suggested reforms outlined above could be started immediately and fully implemented within five years, since much preliminary work has already been done by the Ministry of Education on such things as formative assessment in primary schools, policy for learning support for children with special needs and disabilities, and development of vocational curricula for secondary schools.

Year one of the five-year plan, 2021/2022, will be the first time that transfer from primary to secondary schools will be implemented by zoning. It will involve organising geographical zones for schools and will include determining additional support needed by schools with greater numbers of children from less well-off homes.

It will also involve providing training and support for secondary teachers on mixed ability teaching, as well as training for primary school teachers on formative assessment and the teaching of a broader curriculum. A key component will be implementation of policy and organisational structures, for both primary and secondary schools, for supporting children with special needs and disabilities, as well extending the highly able.

Also important will be continued development of vocational secondary curricula leading to CVQs, as well as strategies for increasing parent and community involvement in education at all levels. In addition, the ongoing upgrading of all schools, including creation of a sixth form college, will need to commence.

In year two, 2022/2023, emphasis will be on supporting teachers and students at all levels and providing guidance to parents on their roles within the new system, while continuing to develop new curricula and provide in-service training to teachers. Years three and four, 2023/2024 will involve continued support to teachers, parents and students, monitoring the effectiveness of the changes, and ongoing evaluation of progress and interventions where necessary.

Year five will see the system fully operational with Harrison College just teaching two year groups of sixth formers. Depending on enrolment the formation of additional sixth form colleges will need to be considered.

Deciding to implement this five-year plan would mean that 2021 could be the start of an exciting new era of education in Barbados, setting us well on the way to developing the world class education system that our country needs and that our children and grandchildren deserve.

Dr Garry Hornby is an Emeritus Professor of Education; Dr Marcia Pilgrim is a Learning Support Teacher at St Winifred’s School