Fixing the foundation

Mar 01, 2009 Editorial

For any country to develop in the modern world it must stress the education of its population. Brains, not brawn, are the key to national and individual success. This focus on education, contrary to what some may believe, cannot however be sprung willy-nilly on an unsuspecting citizenry, but rather must be grafted into a solid foundation.
This foundation is the primary school system. Fortunately, our Ministry of Education (MOE) has not missed this lesson.

Over the past decade the MOE has experimented with quite a number of innovations in the delivery of a primary education in an attempt to both reverse its collapse of the previous decades, as well as refine its contents to prepare our youths for the new millennium.
In 2001, the Ministry made a bold move when it announced the replacement of the Secondary Schools Entrance Examination (SSEE), more popularly known as the “Common Entrance”. This was actually done five years down the line.

The MOE proposed that primary school students would henceforth write three “assessment” exams – at the end of the second, fourth and sixth grades – that will determine their secondary school placement. The rationale for the replacement of the SSEE was that, as a single “make or break” exam, too much was being placed on the young charges, and continuous assessments would streamline needed interventions.
In our editorial, “Common Entrance” of March 7, 2006, we queried the rationale in pointing out that “the stresses on the ‘young minds’ will now be applied at an even earlier age – at seven and nine rather than only at eleven”. We pointed out in our follow-up editorial, “SSEE” of October 2006, “We have now witnessed that children are already being forced into ‘extra lessons’ to enhance their performance at this age. Where will it end?”

Over the past months the MOE has been issuing stern warnings that the “lessons” for the Sixth Graders, as had become standard during “Common Entrance” days, had not only continued unabated in school premises, but were joined by lessons for fourth and fifth graders.
This practice, they warned, would be punishable. We hope this threat would be finally carried out, since we believe that our curriculum, while being very comprehensive, can be covered during the normal school hours.
In our newspaper of February 27, we carried a report: “Education Ministry engages initiative to improve primary level assessments”, in which the findings were commendably candid. Inter alia, it was stated that “based on the Ministry’s analysis over the years (presumably from 2003) the mean score of the assessments either remained static or fluctuated, thus no significant improvement in pupils’ performance has been realised.”

In the editorial “SSEE” back in 2006, we had observed: “The sad fact is that the touted theory of utilising the early scores to monitor and work on the individual child’s performance as he/she moves through the higher grades has remained at the level of theory.
We would like to hear of the school that has integrated the scores into their teaching methodology. With all the burdens on our teaching service do we really expect that they are in a position to execute such a program?”

The MOE, at the workshop, also took heed of a criticism that we had made in March 2006 of its execution of the assessment tests: “Another area of concern is that, since the marking of test papers is being done by resident school-teachers, the potential for abuse and fraud is heightened.”
Even back then the Ministry had promised that the marking would be done at “regional centres”, but evidently this was never implemented. We hope that this will be rectified immediately.

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