Minister of Education Santia Bradshaw’s media conference on the 2021 Barbados Secondary Schools’ Entrance Examination.
Minister of Education Santia Bradshaw
- We have learnt over the past few months… We have to live in a new world…
- After the media briefing, the Ministry will email 11+ results to the students’ G-Suite accounts.
- Results will also be sent to the principals and the school in case a student does not receive his/her results electronically.
- 3 173 or 95.1% of candidates have been allocated to secondary schools
- 94% were allocated in 2020
- 97% were allocated in 2019
- National mean is 55.64, a 2.6 decline from past year.
- Schools’ performance: 47 public below the national mean, 21 above the national mean.
- 21 public and 21 private above the national mean. Average knowledge.
- Females higher understanding of concepts.
- One student from St Stephen’s Primary scored 99 per cent.
- The national mean was 66.28 per cent vs 69.25 last year
- 49 public below the national mean
- 22 private above the national mean.
- It means students have an average knowledge of grammar, vocabulary and comprehension.
- Work has started to move away from the Common Entrance Examination.
- The Ministry is looking at specialist schools and centres of excellence.
- This includes revising the curriculum to include topics such as financial literacy, robotics and coding.
Chief Education Officer Dr Ramona Archer-Bradshaw
- It cannot be business as usual.
- We encourage all teachers to perform diagnostic assessments.
- It must not only be teaching the content, but teaching the student.
- Ministry will send student profiles to secondary schools to understand the deficits.
- Officers at Ministry are reviewing syllabuses because we cannot teach them as in the past.
- Remediation is extremely important, application, evaluation, and creation of concepts.
- Teachers and parents must work together to help our students. Using various assessments.
- Mental health is important, so a committee has been set up to create activities to help students.
- The Ministry has been meeting with PAHO and other organisations to determine how to address challenge to get students moving.
- Materials and resources have been identified for special education.
- Students’ councils will be strengthened, so they can have a voice.
- Continuous training is high on the chart through Erdiston and the Ministry for principals and teachers.
- The Ministry is also exploring linkages with a university in Finland to give teachers exposure to technological pedagogy.
- Workshops for principals and teachers will be offered in areas like industrial relations, use of technology, stress management.
- Mental Health & Wellness committee organising activities for principals and teachers.
- Monitoring, evaluation and support are important. The plan is to continue observing our classes to be able to provide support to our teachers and students.
- Parent support programmes will be put in place for the online environment.
- We are agreed that we must phase out the CEE, but we must have the consultations. It does not mean we do not improve what we are doing.
- We must do things that will bring us closer to removing the CEE.
- We will have challenges during the new school year. There are simple things we can do to help our students and teachers. It may be rough over the next few weeks.
- Encourage parents to get students vaccinated and to get vaccinated, so that we can have a phased return to face-to-face school.
Director of Education Reform Dr Idamay Denny
- The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a number of things home to us.
- If we are going to diversify our economy, we have to start at the level of the school, so curriculum reform will have to be a critical plank.
- Principals met with BIDC and important changes will come to our curricula, especially at the secondary level.
- Children are not engaged, but when introduced to new growth areas, they will become more engaged and more interested in school.
- A draft framework is being considered internally. It will be brought to stakeholders including principals, teachers and parents for feedback.
- One of the things we have started to do is an electronic teaching framework. We are going to use teachers that are good to help them deliver to their colleagues.
- We are doing a number of things to change the system and the paradigm during the course of the new school year.
- On Lower 1st: The Ministry is fully in support of it because it was a suggestion that came from the Ministry. We are saying that when they get the lists, they need to go through the item analysis, content analysis, and individual performance. Not all schools will need to do it.
- On timeframe for completion of reform: It will be difficult, and we must consider feedback from consultations. The public will be kept informed.
