Serious problems with CPCE’s Associate Degree programme

Dec 23, 2012 Letters

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Dear Editor,
We the teachers of the Cyril Potter College of Education, First Batch of Associate Degree Teachers would like to share a burning issue with the media and the public and hope we will get justice for the New Year 2013.
On 25th of October, 2010, batches of teachers were successfully accepted at the Cyril Potter College of Education, both in service and pre-service throughout the country. We were told that we are in the history of the college making the first batch of ADE teachers.
Things were ‘okay’ during the first two semesters. We received modules and lectures. Then from the third semester, we took a while to get started since modules were not ready and lecturers were not easily found since a lecturer was required to have a ‘degree’ in order to lecturer the students. This went on for the next three semesters. Classes for a semester are usually fifteen (15) weeks. But due to the experimentation on ‘us’ with ADE and the fact that the programme was really prepared for, we suffered by having ten-week semesters, no modules, and a whole lot of discrepancies. We tried to investigate from the principal of our centre, but for some reason they ‘have to cover for the mistakes at Turkeyen campus’.
Results were later distributed for various semesters after one year. On receiving those results, lots of teachers failed and had to repeat courses. To repeat a course means that all course work and all teaching has to go all over again for another fifteen (15) weeks. But this was not so. We were forced to repeat a course in three weeks. We were at our houses and called out on the morning of exams to go and sit exams. When we tried to work with exams time tables, exams changed like ‘lightening’. If the time table had exams for the next week, we were called out to write exams three hours before the exam really started. Everyone at our centre accepted the fact that we were the experimenters and that we really suffered. We carried the same amount of courses as the Certificate Programme but the big difference with the two programmes is the Certificate lasted for three years and we, the ADE lasted two years. We were forced with the same amount of courses as the Certificate teachers which they had in three years to do in two years. We were given new courses which the Certificate people did not do.
We carried a course for a very short time by the name of Civic Life and Ethics and that was done a couple of weeks before final exams. We photocopied modules with our own money just to get our work over with. We spent sleepless nights doing assignments for course work and guess what, the course work never counted. If course work really counted, how come so many failures? If I passed all my final grades, how come I am not graduating?
Course work was supposed to be added to our examination score to give us a final score and based on that final score, which determines if we pass or fail. At CXC students’ SBA scores are added to the examination scores and a final grade is given them. At the University the same thing occurs, so what is the difference with us? The results that we received so far showed a course grade, examination grade and a final grade. So what is the final grade for?
On the 17th of December, 2012, teachers of the Anna Regina Centre turned out to collect their results for the examinations they wrote. Graduation was scheduled for 18th of December, 2012. At that late moment the graduants scattered to find outfits and passage to get to the National Cultural Centre for graduation at 1:30 pm on the 18th of December, 2012. No rehearsals or any kind of formal graduation session was done.
And you know what, on 14th of December 2012, our principal was at Turkeyen awaiting our results to bring down on the coast and guess what, they could not give her at that moment, 3:00 pm, because they were in board meeting making decision who will graduate and who will not graduate.
We haven’t seen the results for the course we re-sat and repeated and our final examination score. And the worst part, we received up to fourth semester result on a slip. We haven’t seen a thing on the fifth semester, sixth semester nor repeats or re-sits. We don’t even know if our papers were marked or what really went on. Some teachers at Turkeyen did not even write all the examinations as the other centres but yet they graduate.
Can you imagine eleven out of twenty seven teachers ‘failed’ as claimed? This has not only occurred at Anna Regina but throughout the country. There is great confusion at Turkeyen with the pre-service students. How are we to be punished for the negligence of the people who are responsible for the mess of this ADE Programme?
I write seeking justice on behalf of all the teachers who know they passed but because of the negligence of the people of Turkeyen we ‘failed’. I want our status to change like all others from TQM to AM because we endured a lot and we worked really hard to get through this college. I feel our papers were never marked and we just happen to face the unfortunate consequences.
Concerned teacher

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