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?