Cleveland Sam, Assistant Registrar Public Information and Customer Service
BU Commenter Ping Pong posted the following two comments to highlight a matter that should be of concern to all Barbadians.
Comment 1
On 25th August @ 6:03 David posted in this thread, a report by Cara Foster titled: CXC not in business of failing students.
In that report Mr Cleveland Sam of CXC is quoted as saying “There’s a Paper 1, which is a multiple choice, a Paper 2, which is the structured, answered questions and the SBAs [School-Based Assessments]. If the SBA component of the examination has not been received by CXC, then the student is given ‘ungraded’,”
On page 4 of today’s edition of Barbados Today, Mr Ronald Jones, Minister of Education, is reported to be saying that the case of ungraded results had nothing to do with SBAs!!
Well what did cause CXC to issue ungraded results and other spurious results?
Like much else in Barbados, the standards and reliability of our once excellent education system is slipping. However what is really disturbing is that the citizens are apathetic and unconcerned.
Comment 2
So now the SBAS are corrected!
http://www.nationnews.com/nationnews/news/100149/sbas-corrected
“When CXC results were released on August 18, entire classes from Combermere, The St Michael, Grantley Adams Memorial and Springer Memorial Schools were left bewildered when they received an ungraded score for their school-based assessments (SBAs).
“Where we have been given the evidence of the SBAs, those have been marked and the students would have received updated pre-slips through the local registrar,” CXC spokesman Cleveland Sam told the WEEKEND NATION yesterday.
Sam said the marking would have occurred in recent days but shed no further light on the matter.”
I am left to speculate that if no intervention was made by the Ministry then those students would have been left with ungraded results.
Yet all those in charge at CXC will continue along merrily! Will the Ministry of Education strongly request an investigation of CXC and in particular of the online marking process? Will the Ministry stop be so subservient to CXC and assert its status as the agent of the owners of CXC i.e. the people of the Caribbean Community?
Before Bush Tea chimes in, or are we all really brassbowls?
Before Bush Tea chimes in, the answer is probably, due to overwhelming evidence, a resounding, YES.
How could this have occurred?
Moreover, with the major issue of the disagreement over who is to mark SBA’s, the Ministry is implementing school based assessments throughout the school years.
So, you have something that is having major issues, which you then implement across the board.
Insanity, that must be it, or ‘We are all brassbowls’.
I am informed that a number of students at a St. Michael secondary school did not qualify for a Barbados scholarship because a head of department collected their SBAs, re-marked them and lowered their marks in the process. My understanding is that he did not teach these children who did better than the ones he taught, so in order to make himself look good, he lowered the marks of the children that he did not teach. This fool sabotaged the students to make himself look good and he has gotten away with it.
@Caswell et al.
I am firmly of the opinion that SBA’s should be scrapped. Something that is so critical to someone’s early life and it is a broken basketball.
No, not at all. They should just use that third paper which is used for private students, to broaden the assessment of the student’s knowledge, for everyone.
Crusoe
I am firmly of the view CXC should be scrapped. It is an experiment that has gone awfully wrong.
This year they could not attract enough qualified teachers to mark scripts and they even resorted to using a gardener.
Sent from my iPad
@Caswell, ‘..and they even resorted to using a gardener…”
I really hope that you are joking.
Crusoe
I don’t joke. I am told that CXC recruited UWI students to mark scripts and did not check to see if the students had even passed the subject that they were marking.
Sent from my iPad
I have been told that the one time top school in Barbados will get NO scholarships next year.
Folks ….
Without any doubt, this is brass bowlery at work again.
You ALL know the answers….
BBBBBs doing shiite …as has become the norm.
If this was ever fully exposed, we would find that it is all about petty individuals, protecting their useless donkeys, to keep their meaningless jobs….
The only REAL joke is that they will get away with this in brass bowl land.
Caswell is right about the SBAs … total NONSENSE… as would be expected from a stupid, waste-of-time entity like CXC…
Here you have ‘projects’ that can be done by ANYONE – on behalf of the students – then are marked by biased teachers (and others)…. and these contribute to people being called ‘Scholars”?
…only in BBBBBland.
Is it any surprise that our ‘graduates’ are mostly clerks – at best, …and more often security guards and porters – even in our OWN local businesses?
Steupsss… in respect of the actual moot….
…Bushie votes for BOTH to be liars …AND brassbowls.
Caswell Franklyn September 1, 2017 at 8:38 PM #
I am informed that a number of students at a St. Michael secondary school did not qualify for a Barbados scholarship because a head of department collected their SBAs, re-marked them and lowered their marks in the process. My understanding is that he did not teach these children who did better than the ones he taught, so in order to make himself look good, he lowered the marks of the children that he did not teach. This fool sabotaged the students to make himself look good and he has gotten away with it.@@@@
We are set up to fail ,this is deep.
Surely the pubic deserves an explanation? What about the students affected who have had to endure the emotional stress of the back and forth palaver? What about the dent to our vaunted education reputation?
David September 2, 2017 at 5:01 AM #
Surely the pubic deserves an explanation?
As with everything else. Did we get an explanation on Cahill? Have we got one on the many ‘projects’, their costings, benefits to the island etc?
Do we really expect any one this? We should!
Have to give the nod to Bushie. He has been saying that this is BB’Land for ages, it took a long time for it to sink in for me, but he is right.
@ Crusoe
(Bushie) has been saying that this is BB’Land for ages,
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Nothing special about Bushie…. it is the whacker.
Boss, if you want to get a REALLY good look at the lotta shiite around the place…
…get a whacker.
You will be shocked at what goes on below the surface of an apparently ‘nice looking’ lawn.
..the lotta slugs, snails, centipedes, mice, fleas and chinks….
..the lotta dog doo…. cat piss… even human waste..
..the yardfowls who roam through lapping it all up…
It could overwhelm yuh hear??!!
…But start up the whacker with a good 1.04 size nylon …. and watch the shiite fly….
LOL
Instead of waiting for the shit to hit the fan, de whacker puts the fan into the shiite….
ha ha ha
Whaloss!!!
Wunna ain’t the same folks that promoting ongoing assessment as a credible replacement to the Common Entrance?
@enuff
Explain, are the two issues i.e. continuous assessment and conflicting positions on. SBAs by the MoE and CXC not mutually exclusive?
When all is said and done bright, honest, hard working students will succeed. The others will fail. It has always been so. It will always be so. Back in the good old days when the only people who went to “good schools”, were white people and teacher’s children there were failures too because some of these people were duncy and only got through because of skin colour or who daddy was…some of these people went on to be housewives who had diffuculty running a household even with the help of 3 or 4 servants and some became clerks in daddy’s business, and some went to England and spent a lifetime assembling widgets in factories in the midlands. The rest ‘o we? We worked hard, found other opportunities for our education and made a success of our lives.
It has always been so.
My only problem is that my grandmother weeded farm ground for 75 years to support this sh!te.
Ad I paid and continue to pay onerous taxes to do the same.
David
My comment relates to the actions of markers putting their personal agenda/reputation over fairness.
Enuff, no system is perfect. We just need o efficiently manage he process; the checks and balances.
Simple Simon
My grandmother (who was bright bright) did not enjoy schooling past the most rudimentary levels. However as you wrote about “the rest “o we”, she still made a success of her life in raising her children and then helping to raise her grandchildren. She was an impassioned supporter of school. She (like many of her generation) lovingly encouraged if not insisted even at the point of inflicting verbal or even physical pain that each young person in her care should acknowledge and make positive use of the educational opportunities that a newly independent and developing Barbados was providing its citizens.
Today Barbadians mostly enjoy a relatively high quality of life. That was not always so. It is undeniable that many decades ago, no matter how bright or hard working, the lot in life for most working class Barbadians was nasty, brutish and short. It was purposeful action of the leadership of the working people since the 1940’s that provided increasing opportunity for bright and hard working Barbadians to enjoy the fruits of their talent and labour and to have hope for a better tomorrow for their children.
We must not allow what was past to become our future! I am concerned that the present leadership is allowing either by acts of commission or omission that dismal past to become the future of too many young persons. We must not allow our institutions like CXC to lose sight of their original purpose due to corporate greed, arrogance, self-aggrandizement and unbalanced fascination with technological toys.
The specific issue of this thread while simple is but another cut in the magnificent achievements of working Barbadians of the latter half of the 20th century. Students deserve timely and accurate grades for the work done. The currency of those academic certificates based on those grades must not be devalued due to questionable practices. Those who claim to be strict guardians of our heritage must be evaluated and held accountable on their craftsmanship of our collective fates.
Even if the children succeed in school, what are they doing with their exams in a country with a dark future? There only chance is to study abroad, to work there and to send home food parcels and money.
Everything said by any of the political elites, economic elites, elites generally, must be regarded as a lie ………….. until denied. Then we know for certain it is a lie.
For there cannot be any other point of departure!
And so it has always been. Barbados was populated based on the needs of the sugar industry, for firstly free, and then cheap labour. The sugar industry has been a dying industry for more than 100 years, it would have been better if it had never existed in the first place, but we Bajans still have to find ways to live.
That said Barbadians have always had to migrate in order to make a living. It is what it is. We can’t unmake the past. But we always have to be smart and hard working in the now. My great uncle and my step grandfather helped to build the Panama Canal. My great aunt cooked and washed for loggers and prospectors in Brazil, my father and his brothers worked construction on U.S. owned Chaguaramas Naval Facility in Trinidad, my sisters nursed the English and delivered countless English babies after World War two, my brother policed in New York City, another brother drove trucks and assembled widgets in those English factories. This generation of my family continues to seek out opportunities wherever they exist, they continue to wok hard and to work well, and an excellent education is a geat help. We do not like being a nomadic people, but like many, many Bajans before us and after us we do what we have to do in order to survive.
The future for the majority people of Barbados has always been dark. But we will survive. Barbados and Barbadians will survive. We have survived far darker times (or maybe I should say whiter times). We will survive again. We will thrive. We will prosper. Never forget that we are a resilient people.
Or ask yourself why a Bajan, specifically a black working class Bajan Bajan woman is significantly less likely to commit suicide than a white middle class American man, who has all the privileges that whiteness, and maleness, and Americaness provides.
Resilience.
Re the SBA’s, I think it suitable to add also, that recently, in one of the top four secondary schools, there was one subject at CSEC for which the teacher ended up rushing students through most of the required SBA’s (nine of fourteen or similar), in the period January to March.
These were SBA’s that should have been allocated to the students during the fourth and fifth form years. However, the teacher / school were errant in arranging and allocating the SBA topics and provisions for the experiments etc and the students ended up getting the short end of the stick, or at least, the ones who actually did it on their own.
That was in a science subject, so much for all of this talk of STEM.
That scenario is not hearsay, it is FACT.
Hence, one of the reasons I see the SBA’s as being badly managed and they should be scrapped. Private students sit a third paper, to demonstrate the same ability that SBA’s are supposed to test.
All students should sit that paper instead.
David
Everywhere we know where your ‘checks and balances’ are spoken about have all kinds of problems. Unsolvable!
These tried ‘memes’ lack any import.
The United States is maybe the one place deliberately so set up
Yet nothing could prevent the rise of a Adolf, the second, and the white supremacists. The slave economy model.
With all of these ‘cheques’ and ‘balances’ economic collapse yet looms, most places.
You must stop buying into that CNN bull shiite. These systems are dead or at least in cul-de-sacs. And no amount of self delusion or hope mongering or propaganda campaigns can ‘check’ any ‘balances’.
Breaking news
Tomorrow at 11 a.m His Majesty King Freundel Jerome Stuart will be addressing his adoring subjects on national television 📺.
I can imagine how excited David is at the moment to hear his king speak to him.
Will he fire MICHAEL CARRINGTON for tieffing John Griffiths money?
Is it true that the problem with the ungraded SBAs was the fault of the Ministry? These were in a box at the ministry I am told. Someone forgot to send them on to CXC!
Ping Pong we are all aware of the eye raising reports through the years as it relates to SBAs being bungled. How about teachers having to visit the homes of students that refused to complete the SBAs then having to complete on their behalf to prevent the full class from receiving an ‘ungraded’?
Excellent article.
David
The Speaker never stole nobody’s money
The Speaker refused to pay the gentleman, until some administrative matters with the case was sorted out
In the opinion of the Court and the gentleman, things were taking too long
The Court ordered the Speaker to hurry up and settle the matter – and that he did
What you need to follow up on ……is GEORGE PAYNE still a tief according to EDMUND HINKSON ??
Why GEORGE PAYNE won’t drop the case in the HIGH COURT?????
And two of those BLP jokers talking about……BLP unity !!!!!!
Looka get an article up and running ……for discussion on this hot topic!
If you and BU ……are to be taken seriously about ………balanced reporting !!!!
“The Speaker refused to pay the gentleman, until some administrative matters with the case was sorted out. In the opinion of the Court and the gentleman, things were taking too long. The Court ordered the Speaker to hurry up and settle the matter – and that he did.”
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Fractured BLP September 2, 2017 at 10:08 PM #
One may surmise from that post, that Fractured’s preferred evening for drinking and relaxing is Saturday evening.
@ David
The more it is looked at, the CLEARER it becomes that this SBA shiite is total nonsense.
When we start wrong, there is only one way it can end.
The CXC concept is FLAWED.
One does NOT seek to localise matters of international accreditation. One does the VERY opposite.
Do you think that St Philip should have their own drivers licensing authority?
Should St Lucy issue their own passports?
Lotta shiite….
Why does the Caribbean want their OWN certificates?
The whole point of educating our children is to bring them up to par with the best in the world. To measure this, we should be measuring ourselves against the BEST examination system that exists anywhere.
Having started the CXC shiite, there have since been playing around with the system in order to achieve the kind of results that they consider to reflect ‘success’…. even though it CLEARLY does not stack up against others.
SBAs effectively give up to 40% of FREE marks to students, so that some idiot who can otherwise only muster 25, ends up with a ‘passing’ grade.
…this probably explains angela, ..half the ‘undergrads’at UWI, ..most of Jeff’s students ..and all of our parliamentarians…
Bushie
The same system you referring to continues to undergo constant change, and is currently being reviewed again as it has been deemed too easy and sub-standard to other systems around the world. No longer anti-albinocentric?🤔
I thought we were all about expanding access to education? The opinion expressed in the article from BT effectively negates that notion and reinforces six forms to the few schools that have them and BCC. Some of these “top” schools are akin to parasites feeding on the cream of the crop from the “lower” echelon schools and parading them as their own when the students from those schools achieve any measure of academic success after transferring to complete six form.
This is still an egalitarian society, one which the late Tom Clarke used to boast a few years ago that he went to HC and all the PMs of Barbados went to HC.
Tear down those walls
Elitist not Egalitarian-blame it on the hot weather
Sargeant
Au contraire, rejigging and expanding the offerings at an amalgam of BCC, SJPP and Erdiston is expanding access. Undergraduate degrees, including BTec, for students interested in automotive, draughting/architecture, nursing, fashion design, animation, textiles, materials, medical technology, surveying etc would better serve expansion than more 6th form schools, not to mention the potential to earn forex.
We can learn from the Jamaica model?
David
Jamaica and Tdad are doing it.
Who will comfort the parents of the child who committed suicide over receiving an ungraded result in his cxc exams?
Reported to have attended the renown Combermere Secondary School. Only God knows the extent to which the protracted issues at that place contributed.
@ David / Ping Pong,
Terrible, that is too much. Condolences to his family, but words are not enough.
Enough is enough. Everything is swept under the carpet. Crappy SBA management, crime and violence with guns, economy.
Seems the attitude is ‘it will pass’.
Enough.
Our youth are facing a dismal future for which they have not been prepared. With time, people will adjust and adopt strategies appropriate to their circumstances and asperations. However in the interim we will lose more than a few to depression, persistant poverty, drugs, crime and suicide.
“The Gleaner has been reliably informed that students from a number of high schools who sat CAPE, particularly economics, had received adjustments in their initial grades. Grades, in some instances, improved from three to two, and in some cases from two to one.”
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/lead-stories/20170906/cxc-confirms-changes-some-cape-results
Will anybody in authority ask the CXC Registrar why CXC did not get it right the first time? Are there other “discrepancies” in other subjects? What do students say to universities that they may have sent the initial (incorrect) grades? What if applications to universities were rejected and places allocated to others because of these incorrect grades? Is the credibility of the CXC certificates now enhanced?
Government, parents and students put a lot of time and money into the “education system”. They deserve a fair and accurate examination system.
@ Ping Pong
CXC is a lotta shiite. A second-rate scam that adds NOTHING to the actual EDUCATION of Black people in the region. PERIOD!!!
It was a bad idea and a waste of resources from start… just like the CSME that spawned its development by Owen…. That money and wasted human resource SHOULD have been used to ENHANCE actual teaching and guidance in the school system instead….. so that our students could DOMINATE the honour rolls as measured by cutting edge, internationally accredited, well established, international examination systems.
Instead, they are busy trying to get unhappy, overworked teachers to correct their papers ‘for free’, while conceptualising ‘SBAs’ and other shiite schemes which are CLEARLY designed to enable semi-literate jokers to ‘pass’ their exams by crediting them with up to 40% of the passmark …with work done with the ‘help’ of whosoever chooses to do it for the students….
What a colossal joke….
CXC is not the only examination body that has SBAs as part of the certification process. The International Baccalaureate which is considered the gold standard worldwide of educational certification for high school (6th form) students has SBAs as part of its exam process. The IB Diploma is the most highly regarded educational certification even in the UK, the USA and notably China and India. There is only one school in Barbados that offers the IB diploma.
I have a friend in Jamaica whose children attend the one school there that offers the IB. An example of the SBA work they had to do involved measuring the growth rates of mangrove plants in response to various levels of salinity and copper. Another project was extracting and measuring the levels of fat in various meats.The students’ written work is subjected to some kind of digital scrutiny to make sure there is no plagiarism.
The late Dr Desmond Broomes who did much work in the setting up of CXC’s examination systems was also a consultant to the IB organisation (I believe).
@ Ping Pong
No one disputes the value or the usefulness of projects that can be done as SBA-type projects…
But are examinations not done under controlled conditions principally to ensure that the work produced comes from the mind of the student?
What kind of scrutiny – digital or otherwise, is used to ensure that this is the case?
In a small society, even if teachers are as above suspicion as was Caesar’s wife – who would doubt that they will contribute THEIR expertise to the work of their favourites?
What stops parents, siblings, …even ‘professional course assistants’ from making a business of producing impressive SBA papers on behalf of weak students?
With such glaring weaknesses, what are the chances that CXC will be welcomed aboard the group of world acclaimed examination boards?
You must know that the focus on quantity (of ‘successes’) and quality of product is mostly mutually exclusive….
…and CERTAINLY so in BBBBLand – where even simple straightforward issues are beyond us…
@Ping Pong September 4, 2017 at 5:44 PM “Who will comfort the parents of the child who committed suicide over receiving an ungraded result in his cxc exams?”
Probably had a history of depression. Likely a multi generational history of depression/mental illness.
Nobody in good mental/emotional/psychological health kills themselves over a single examination result.
Because healthy people live with the reality that there is always a tomorrow.
I can’t blame CXC for this at all.
“Probably had a history of depression. Likely a multi generational history of depression/mental illness.”
Wow!
Simple Simon September 6, 2017 at 4:01 PM #
So, if his whole university future rested on a good grade, in Barbados where jobs now are so scarce and there are few options for work and study around, it should have been ‘no big deal’?
Hmmph.
PS I do not know the young man nor family, but noting that one should not write off how serious such a thing can be for someone.
Was it Atticus Finch (fictional character) who said that you should not judge a man until you walk a mile in his shoes?