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Two weeks ago, I described conditions in the education system as destructive.
I identified what I called the double whammy as follows: “We persist in giving priority to grammar school type education for children who may be otherwise talented or motivated, but who have little aptitude for many of the existing subjects on the school curriculum.
Photo: Ministry of Education
“Students are forced to try for ‘passes’ in order to be acknowledged as worthy future employees and citizens. Without other options, they also face the double whammy of having to make that attempt at ‘passes’ as students in schools that consistently underperform.”
Last week, data, which the Minister of Education provided to the Senate, demonstrated the extent to which the primary schools are woefully underperforming, measured by the inability of pupils to obtain 50 per cent in this year’s Secondary Entrance Assessment (the SEA).
This group comprised 40 per cent of the 19,000 pupils across the education districts. Some were unable to obtain 30 per cent. The majority of these pupils were boys. The figures covered the period 2018 to 2023. Reportedly, a consistently negative trend was discernible.
These figures have revealed another dimension to the destructive conditions in the education system. They demonstrate that we are forcing significant numbers of children in a state of underperformance and limited primary school development onto the passes treadmill.
Photo: Ministry of Education
Do the lower tier secondary schools in which they will be placed have the resources and programmes to provide for this additionally disadvantaged group in order to address their educational deficiency? What provision is the Ministry of Education making for this?
It turns out therefore that the education system is delivering a triple whammy to those in that primary school underperforming group.
They are suffering the triple whammy of a poor primary school foundation, placement into secondary schools (which may already be carrying the warning label “academic watch”) and a restrictive diet of academic subjects in which to try for passes.
An incisive editorial in the Trinidad Express newspaper compared the education data with the Police Service’s crime statistics. The editorial asserted: “the districts with high numbers of underperforming pupils are the same areas with high levels of school dropouts, poverty, family violence and crime.”
Stigmatisation at the age 11 or 12, when a child only achieves entry to a school not well regarded, is also a significant factor in the destruction of youthful self-esteem and consequent descent into anti-social behaviour and worse.
My time spent on the ground, whether in panyards and elsewhere and in mentoring efforts, frequently provides me with insights that I am able to share with readers.
I have learned that within school districts or smaller communities within boroughs there are also some schools that are better regarded than others, even though they may not be branded “prestige schools”—a divisive concept.
In one of my interactions with a lower tier school, students who had not made it even to the better regarded school in their area, were described as downcast or hostile to the school even as they arrived for their first day.
I was told that many of their parents were past pupils of the school, but some of those parents had themselves cried down their children for only passing for that school.
It was regarded as almost inevitable that those of the new intake, who were not hostile at the outset, would be made so by the older pupils in the school.
Some citizens may want troublesome youth to be subject to military discipline. In the Senate, the Minister of Education referred to Cabinet approval of a compulsory registration for students expelled from schools across the country into the Military-Led Academic Training (MiLAT) programme.
Thank you Independent Senator Thompson-Ahye for your query as to the extent of the legal authority to do this. The Senator’s questions exposed that this compulsory registration rests merely on a Memorandum of Understanding between the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Youth Development and National Service.
Photo: MiLAT
Can the Milat programme draw legal authority from the Ministry of Education, regarding special educational institutions, without legislation permitting the assignment or delegation of such authority?
Backdoor conscription into a military institution would be questionable. The euphemism “military-led” cannot evade that.
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