Minister Jones: Be fair to the children
“Let us keep discussing.”
That is the call from Minister of Education, Ronald Jones, on the contentious marking of School Based Assessments (SBAs) and calls for remuneration from the Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union (BSTU).
He was speaking during a DLP meeting at the Alleyne School on Sunday night, when he was asked by a member of the audience to give his take on the matter, against the backdrop of concerns that this matter, if not dealt with, has the potential to affect many of the island’s children, should the teachers refuse to mark the SBAs.
Jones told the audience that it was the teachers who asked for the SBAs to be introduced, which he said was a sensible move since it moves away from a one-shot exam.
The Minister said an opinion was sought from the Solicitor General, which was rejected by the Union.
He also queried why some schools were having issues, while others were not, conceding that there are some teachers that will be burdened by three types of assessments.
“Say to the Ministry, ‘The load is becoming greater, can we have an auxiliary who can help us in the management of this process?’ But the first call is, ‘We want money.’ Don’t care how much money you give a teacher, because of the work and nature of a teacher’s job, I personally don’t believe it would be enough. I was there,” he stated.
“So I want to be fair, but be fair to the people’s children too. Until we are able to fully resolve that through some mechanism, let’s keep discussing,” the Minister urged.
He revealed that this year the June CXC exam will be making technological advancements.
“So SBAs and the student’s work must be submitted digitally and will be marked digitally. “So we have to work out that experience in this year, but I want to say to you that we will work assiduously to remove this as a threat to students’ learning and try an appropriate system that doesn’t involve money, to do that.”
“What are going to get paid per script, or SBA; then somebody will come and say ‘the students’ end-of-term exam, I want to be paid for that too. The project work that students do at school I want to be paid for that too’. Where does it stop?” he queried.
Minister Jones stated to the audience that the BSTU never wrote to the Ministry about the SBA concerns. “They wrote CXC as the examining body and said we are correcting your SBA so we want to be paid for that... When the Union recognised that they couldn’t get anywhere with CXC, they tried to involve the wider Caribbean Union, but none of the other Unions in the region were putting that pressure on CXC or on their governments,” he pointed out.
“We stated that it is part of the routine work of teachers. In fact when the marks are called for, those marks should have been finished every since – not that you wait until the end of a second term to do any marking. Once you are working with the children, you are progressively marking them at different stages of the project.”
He noted that since then the teachers have turned to the Ministry of Education saying they want to be paid. “My position is simple. If you have worked with these children and you have seen it is becoming a little more demanding, you can’t be asking for payment for what is considered to be a part of your work, that you asked for way back!”
“I have said further, you have 180 students in History, or in Social Studies. How much do you want to be paid for each of those scripts? Do you want to be paid a dollar, two, three dollars to mark those scripts? Is that what you want? Are you going to hang our children for $180 for $360 for $540? Is that really what this should come down to?" (JH)