SBA deadline met

THE MAD SCRAMBLE to ensure Barbadian students benefit from the work they put into completing their school-based assessments (SBAs) seemed to have paid off.

Reliable sources told the MIDWEEK NATION yesterday that just about all of the schools submitted corrected SBAs for the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) to the Ministry of Education to pass on to the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) by the regular deadline of April 30.

It is also understood that the assurance has been given that the projects not yet submitted would be handed in by the absolute deadline in mid-July. Any SBAs submitted after that would go ungraded, but the source did not think there was any danger of this happening.

When it became clear that the position by teachers represented by the Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union (BSTU) not to correct the final SBA projects was no idle threat, the ministry and principals reportedly employed alternative means to get the scripts corrected. Some of those measures were heavily criticised by the leadership of the BSTU.

There are reportedly separate deadlines for the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations SBAs, and the BSTU has not yet revealed how it plans to approach those. (YB)