Opposition Senator Tricia Watson has backed calls by the Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) to postpone the Common Entrance Examination to give students extra time to prepare.
During Monday’s debate on the Appropriation Bill, 2024 in the Upper House, she said despite the government recognising the need to put its education reform plans on hold until 2026, it still refused to budge in allotting extra time to students and parents who have been expressing reservations with the current May 7 exam date.
“How can the government give the degreed planners and managers, the highly educated and well-remunerated consultants extra time, but 10-year-olds and 11-year-olds who have Common Entrance this year cannot get a little extra time?
“The government is married to the date of May the seventh, but these young people are the young people who were in Class One when COVID hit us, and lost thousands of hours of learning time. Playing catch up for the last four years,” Senator Watson said.
She added: “There are a great many students in this country who had no schooling during that period, some of them have the 11-Plus exams in a couple weeks, studying from [a cell phone] and sharing it with their siblings. Parents had to go back out to work and the teenage sibling had to supervise the younger sibling, and neither of the two of them, or the three of them, or the four or five were working. That happened in this country. Those are the children that must face Common Entrance in a few weeks.”
Senator Watson noted that given the numerous challenges students have faced over the last few years within the education system, giving them extra time should be seen as reasonable.
“Far too many of our children lost and are now at a loss because of what they missed of school during that period. Almost two years and now we cannot have a heart. The same people that are taking an extra year for themselves cannot have a heart and give children in Barbados another six or eight weeks, and at the same time telling us that Common Entrance is archaic, is irrelevant.
“So why are we so committed to forcing these little children to have to do that exam when they are still playing [catch-up]? It is absurd, it is wrong, it is cruel. I am going to use this opportunity to beg the Prime Minister for the parents of Barbados, but more importantly for the children of Barbados – give them the extra time.”
(SB)
