Update: Ministry of Education issues an apology

The Ministry of Education, Technological and Vocational Training has tendered an apology for its role in the administration of the much talked about Computer Science test.

One day after the Inter-American Development Bank apologized for failing to remove several controversial questions from the test, Chief Education Officer Dr Ramona Archer-Bradshaw said that the Ministry accepted responsibility for the test reaching first-formers at five secondary schools across the island.

“Notwithstanding the fact that the Inter-American Development Bank which administered the survey has already apologized for its failure to honour a prior commitment to the ministry to remove the offending questions before placing them before the children, the Ministry now tenders its own apology.” Dr Archer-Bradshaw said in a statement.

“Clearly, what has transpired has left us in no doubt that we took too much for granted in not vetting the final survey. The Ministry now assures all stakeholders that the offensive scripts will now be destroyed and there will be no further use of the survey without our explicit and full scrutiny.

“More importantly, the ministry has already the process of reforming its own policy on data collection in our schools to ensure that incidents such as this are never repeated,” she underscored.

Archer-Bradshaw said the ministry would be holding talks this evening with secondary school principals and the parents of first formers.

(read the full story in Thursday’s E-paper)