Manickchand gathers teachers and parents’ views on automatic promotion
May 24, 2012 | By KNews | Filed Under News
The Ministry of Education, yesterday, kicked off the first in a series of Public Consultation Forums on grade retention, automatic promotions and corporal punishment in schools. Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand was accompanied by several high level officers from the Ministry of Education (MOE) and met with school administrators and parents at the New Amsterdam Secondary School (NAMS) in Berbice.
A section of the group of teachers, headteachers, and education officers at the MOE National Public Consultation in Berbice
The two issues have been heatedly debated at various levels and have been attracting a variety of views and opinions from school teachers, parents, even students and lawmakers. Two MOE Circulars were issued on the MOE’s position on both issues; Grade Retention and Automatic Promotion in 2010 while the pressing issue of corporal punishment (CP) was issued to all schools in 2010.
During the feedback sessions, it was evident that most of the educators present, were not in favour of the automatic promotions policy, and in more than one way or another, sent a signal of their rejection of the policy to the subject minister and her senior officers that were present.
Region Six Education Officer, Shafiran Bhajan, noted that given the investment in education, “we must have returns…We know when the circulars on Grade Retention was issued, it was a time when the returns on the investment was not there at the secondary level”.
She noted that Universal Secondary Education was the ultimate goal of the MOE, “but we found it was not only about access but graduation rates, and drop- outs; and we found that the retention and repetition rates were so high…”
“Today our Minister is taking a second look at the investments at the secondary level of education and from what we have seen, she wants every child to graduate…you are fortunate to be at this forum where you can give…You are the players at the school level and would seem that sometimes because of high repetition rates, utilisation of resources, including space, time, human-teacher resources. “Today you have an opportunity to say what you have to say with regards to the two circulars”.
Manickchand said, “We are telling you where we are and want to hear whether it is working or not working and what you [the teachers] think we can do”. She urged the participants to say how they feel about the issues. She said that the sessions and consultation forum would be recorded.
A Lower Corentyne Secondary School administrator noted how lower- grade, low- performing secondary schools have enormous challenges on the policy.
He added, “Not enough was done to reach out to members of the community and as such, parents do not understand the meaning of the policy because what has been felt was that the No Child Left Behind policy did not encourage children to study because they knew they would be promoted anyway”.
He stated that the policy should be revised, “and get things that were working…Not all the children will understand the true meanings of success until they face a little bit of failure.”
A teacher from Corentyne Comprehensive Secondary supported the Retention system “simply because you find that when these children go to Grade Eleven, and they have entered for CSEC Exams, you have serious problems there…They will not meet the criteria but because of the CSEC criteria and policy, we are forced to enter these students…
“If we are going to keep ‘putting over’ these children when they reach Grade Eleven we will have serious problems”.
The teacher added that retention of students and keeping them back when they fail will “help them” even though it will place more expenses on the family….but in the long run we will be doing a good [thing] for these children”.
Speaking about the remediation ‘after- school’ programme that was instituted by the MOE to cater for poor- performers by keeping them back for one hour after school to do Maths and English, the teacher noted that the children are exhausted at the end of the school day to participate in such a programme.
“They are in school all day and they know they have to stay back for Math…but at 2:30 [pm] when the remedial teacher is there to start the lessons, 90 per cent of the children are out the gate, because they are tired, or hungry.
Most of these children who need remediation are children from the poor homes and they are hungry at 2:30pm”. The teacher recommended that a snack be provided for these students.
Another teacher shared her experience on the negatives of the automatic promotion system. She contended that while a group of Third Formers was writing the National Grade Nine Examinations (NGNA), the “children went to sleep after they were given the exam papers.”
A teacher of Canje Secondary School said that even though there is the automatic promotion policy, students are “dropping out by the tons”. Parents, she noted, give the teachers phone numbers and cell phone numbers “but we are [still] not getting in contact with them”.
One teacher was bold enough to describe the Automatic Promotion policy “a national disaster…causing pandemonium”.
He noted that the policy has opened a way for “indiscipline and caused tremendous stress on teachers because of the indiscipline…brought the standards of the school down” due to the poor performance rates.
Manickchand listened keenly to all of the views of the teachers, most of whom were in favour of retaining students who fail, in the same class. She questioned teachers present as to why some of them are not doing the remedial programme.
Some of the answers were, that the students are too tired to work in the afternoons after school; payment for teachers who teach an hour after school; as well as providing snacks for students since many of them are hungry and cannot concentrate.
Manickchand later met with parents on the matter of automatic promotions. Similar consultations are planned for the other regions in the country.
