Speaking Bajan while being required to write English has proven to be a problem for many children who wrote this year’s Barbados Secondary Schools’ Entrance Examination (BSSEE).
This was one of the concerns raised by Minister of Education Ronald Jones during his assessment of the results of the English section of this year’s exam.
Jones blamed the low English scores on the way many Barbadians communicate with each other, citing that its ripple effect from the use of dialect was being felt in the classroom and was particularly evident in the exam.
“We are not easily a talking population and there tends to be interference between the nation’s language and English,” he said. “So we have to spend some time and act in a responsible way in order to make a difference for our children.”
