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CXC head blasts regional ministries for failing education
Dr Didacus Jules
(Jamaica Gleaner) Registrar and Chief Executive Officer of the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), Dr Didacus Jules, has blamed the Ministries of Education in the region for the glaring failure in the education system.
“(The) biggest problem of education in the Caribbean today is not teachers or student performance. It is with the Ministries of Education, it is the absence of clearly defined policies and a strategic sense of where we are going and what we need to get there,” Dr Jules said on Tuesday.
He was speaking at the International Conference on Education for CARICOM countries at the Hilton Rose Hall Resort.
“The reality is, one of the problems of assessment in the Caribbean is that we are over-testing our children. There are many Ministries of Education that have all kinds of national examinations testing and testing our kids, and to what use is that testing being put?” he asked.
“It is not used for remediation, it is not used for … policy decisions, but we keep testing,” the CXC boss lamented.
He said, based on his assessment, there is need for critical work to be done prior to the Common Entrance or Grade Six Achievement Test and the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate examinations, to ensure that the quality, which is woefully lacking, is achieved.
Meanwhile, Dr Jules said the region was at a disadvantage when less than 50 per cent of children have access to early-childhood education.
“Early-childhood and tertiary-level education are far from universal, with early childhood representing the overlooked sinkhole in which the cognitive and physiological potential of our children is crippled, even before formal education begins.
“All the research shows that zero to five is the period in a person’s life when your potential, and your capacity for life is established. Only 40 per cent of our children enjoy access to early-childhood education,” he revealed.
He noted that while countries have attained universal access in primary and secondary education, provision is sadly limited at the extreme levels of the spectrum.
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