Exam prep assistance available

Measures are being put in place to ensure that Barbadian students are prepared for the 2022 Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) examinations.

During a press conference on Thursday, education minister Kay McConney announced that the ministry will be providing learning development support from the exam preparation success scheme that is there to assist students preparing for the examinations who are experiencing challenges with their studies.

“[For] those who are doing the Caribbean Secondary Examinations and the CAPE students, there will be learning development support. There is a learning development and exam preparation success scheme that is there to assist you where there are deficits or loss. There are workshops on helping study habits and we are asking you, all schools, to please tap into that support being provided through the ministry to be able to support those students who are doing CSEC and CAPE,” she said.

While delivering the feature address at the Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) Annual General Meeting on Tuesday, President of the Caribbean Union of Teachers (CUT) Dr Garth Anderson called on CXC to delay this year’s examinations by three weeks and appealed to Minister of Education Kay McConney for assistance in lobbying for the postponement. Dr Anderson said by proceeding as normal with the exams, CXC would be doing an injustice to students.

Chief Education Officer Dr Ramona Archer-Bradshaw also said the programmes are being designed to assist primary school students who have also been disadvantaged during the online learning and will commence at the beginning of Term 3 on April 26.

“We are moving full steam ahead with those, but based on what we have been seeing at the primary level, we want to ensure that the programmes that we design and develop are meaningful and relevant. We want to make informed decisions when it comes to the creation of those programmes.

“This is the reason that we are looking at implementing them in Term 3 and we didn’t rush to implement them at the beginning of Term 2. We needed to gauge where our children are. We needed to identify the problems so that we can cater effectively to those problems,” Dr Archer-Bradshaw said.

However, the Chief Education Officer said she has been receiving positive reports from principals regarding the progress students have been making when they returned to face-to-face classes last term. She said that while students and teachers were happy to be reunited in the same room, children learn better when they are happy and feel safe.

“I can tell you based on the meetings that we have had, based on the reports of principals, they are working with the children, they are working to bring about improvement in the learning and they will continue to do so.

“So of course, because the children feel safe, because they are comfortable, because they are now not only focusing on one type of learning, but they are able to develop their social skills, their attitudes and so on, it is a positive thing and we are seeing positive growth,” she said. (AH)