BSTU stands firm on SBAs issue

THE Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union (BSTU) is sticking to its decision not to grade any School Based Assessments (SBAs) for the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) without compensation.

 

President of the BSTU, Mary-Ann Redman, says teachers are only asking for a “token of appreciation” for all of the hard work that comes with those SBAs. Addressing a meeting of BSTU members at Solidarity House yesterday evening, on the eve of the resumption of school today, Redman lamented that in spite of them raising this issue with the CXC since 2006, nothing has been done to address their struggle, and instead they have sought to put additional pressure on the teachers with the introduction of even more SBAs, by way of the Caribbean Certificate of Secondary Level Competence and the Caribbean Vocational Qualifications.

 

“All of this is being done, as I keep saying, without any consultation with your union, without any regard to you, without any consideration of the impact of the introduction of those programmes to your workload, to the changes of your terms and conditions of service,” she said.

 

Redman added, “There is nowhere in the Education Act that says that we are to assist in, either wholly or partially, the correction of any externally set and moderated exams. That is what the SBA is, the paper three of CXC’s exams.”

 

While noting that they did it in good faith for a number of years, the BSTU president contended that “enough is enough” and the time had come for them to be compensated. But even though they will not be grading the SBAs, Redman said they will still be assisting the students with preparing those documents.

 

“There is nothing that we will set out to do in this exercise that will jeopardise the success of the students. I know that all of the teachers have been actively assisting the students as per normal to completion of the SBA project. You have received from us the guidelines as to how you should go about dealing with the collection, recording and handing over of those projects to your Heads of Departments for onward submission to the Principals and CXC,” she said.

 

With that in mind, she told the teachers who were asked by their school’s management to put in writing that they were not correcting the SBAs, that there was no need to provide this documentation as they do not have statutory obligation to correct them. What she has advised all teachers to do however, is to make a list of the SBAs that they collected and on what date, and have it signed by their Head of Department, and keep a copy for their own records.

 

Redman made the point while contending that it is time to do away with the SBAs, as many countries are no longer putting a heavy emphasis on this aspect of assessment.  

 

“A lot of the world is phasing out the SBAs for the same reasons that we are here today, the same reasons that we are discussing – the added burden of work on teachers, the added burden on children, especially at a time when they should be consolidating and really preparing for these exams. It is too much work all round and until we take a stand, they are not going to pay us any mind,” the union boss warned. (JRT)