Creating a false sense of euphoria

Aug 15, 2013 Editorial

Many parents are smiling because their children have done exceedingly well at the recent Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE). This year, the performance seems to have exceeded the previous years, given that the children seem to have pursued an even wider array of subjects.
However, the celebrations must be tempered with commonsense and an understanding of what is actually happening.
The results also seem to reveal that rural schools are more than holding their own against the once leading secondary schools in the country. There were two girls who secured a whopping eighteen Grade One passes in subjects, having offered twenty subjects at the CSEC examinations.
According to the results revealed by the Ministry of Education, the children, for the greater part, offered twenty subjects ranging from the traditional subjects, to the unheard of subjects as karate and Theatre Arts, Electronic Document Preparation and Management, Physical Education and Sport.
Many of these may be useful to the student who may seek to pursue studies in the areas of Theatre Arts and Sport, but we cannot see any of them doing this, since Guyana does not set store by these subjects. Theatre was once a flourishing fact in Guyana but always at the individual and private level. Those actively involved always sought employment elsewhere since those spheres of activities could not readily afford them a meal.
All of the new subjects saw the students doing remarkably well. However, there continues to be poor performances in the subjects that matter. A release from the Government Information Agency (GINA) stated that English B (once referred to as English Literature) improved from 59.72 percent in 2011, to 56.5 percent in 2012 to 61.06 percent in 2013 (Grades One to Three).
This is a subject area that demands comprehension and expression. It also involves the use of imagination. The results tell a story about the performance of the students. Many of them would be hard pressed to be gainfully employed in those entities that demand imagination, comprehension and detailed expression of information.
The GINA release continued that passes in English A (once called English Language) improved from 37.02 percent in 2012 to 45.69 percent in 2013. English is supposed to be the native tongue and one would have expected that every child would have at least the rudiments of the language—spelling, subject and verb correlation and vocabulary. Surely, with such a low pass percentage, this cannot be the case with the majority of students who offer the subject at examination.
To make matters worse, English Language is a demanded subject for every form of employment. That less than half of the children who write the examination can claim to be proficient in the subject is disappointing.
Mathematics scored even worse among the children. GINA stated that 28.92 percent, even less than the previous year unless a greater number of students sat the examinations (29.69 percent in 2012) could have been considered to have been successful.
There appears to be a continuing decline in the percentage of passes in Mathematics; from 30.35 per cent in 2011, to 29.69 percent in 2012 to 28.92 in 2013. It may be better to have the children focus on these compulsory subject areas rather than burden them with the plethora of subjects that now adorn certificates, many of which would not be worth the paper on which they are printed.
We will continue to have people stating that they have “ten or more subjects but cannot seem to find a job.” How many of us have not seen job applications that reveal the ability of the applicant to understand basic grammar?
The Education Ministry, when examining the performance in Mathematics notes that, Additional Mathematics, which was written for the first time in 2012 and had a pass percentage of 58.33 percent improved to 80.83 percent in 2013.
If five people write the subject and three of them pass then the percentage pass would be 60 per cent. The percentage pass does not indicate better performance.
It is time we review the entire education system and not allow many parents to become excited over nothing.

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Creating a false sense of euphoria

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