Here we go again…revelling in the release of this year’s CXC and CAPE results. Within a week or two we’ll repeat the shrill hysteria when the results of the NGSA are out!! Now let’s put these exams in perspective: the NGSAs just winnow out 11–12-year-old children for five or so “elite” schools in Georgetown. Everywhere else, kids just move on to high school.
The CSECs are Grade 10 exams for 16-year-olds and only in Guyana five passes (including English and Maths) get into Uni. Every other university – including UWI and the ones contracted to service the GOAL scholarships – demands at least two or three CAPE subjects, taken by 17-18-year-olds in Grade 12.
So, why in the last decade, kids in Grade 10 are writing an ever-increasing number of CSECs – from the average of 7 to this year an astounding 27!!! Why would a kid go through all the mental and other torture to write that many subjects?? If it’s to go on to higher education surely those many subjects aren’t necessary. But we all know why – -and this was just confirmed by one of the kids from Anna Regina Multilateral School (ARMS) who snagged that number. It’s to secure a scholarship to a foreign university that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford!!
And that’s what even the NGSA’s all about, isn’t it?? By getting a “scholarship” to go to the “town school”, the kids are bettering their chances of passing those CSECs and CAPEs and go to universities. But there are a number of problems with this, aren’t there?? We know the Brits crimped our development and installed their school system to create an elitist cream who’d “run the empire”. Here, “run the civil service”!! So do we have to continue this “winnowing out” process today when we need other skills than filling out forms??
How many of the subjects taught have anything to do with work and life, why even have kids write them?!! In this new economy we’re trying to create by diversifying away from the traditional primary production, shouldn’t we be “streaming” our kids into more practical areas of study?? Which at the higher, tertiary levels demand Polytechnics rather than Universities?? Shouldn’t we demonstrate that “hand work” is as good – if not better – than “brain work” – which is a product of our slave and indentureship experience??
Another concern is how were all those subjects crammed into the fixed school hours and school terms? Now your Eyewitness doesn’t want to take away anything from the achievements of the few kids who’ve clawed their way to the top of the race we set up.
But is that race necessary any longer? Your Eyewitness doesn’t think so!!
…with Africa
One thing is certain, the Caribbean is too small for this lady Mia Mottley of Barbados. She’s already staked a role on the world stage that surpasses Manley and Burnham. But if we’re honest, those fellas were more talkers than doers – as their contemporary Lee Kwan Yew wrote in his “From Third World to First”!! And we’re still Third World!! But Mia has been walking the talk from her tiny dot in the Caribbean Sea.
She already partnered with us to cut our food imports by actually PRODUCING substitutes that save foreign exchange – while creating employment. Now she has reached across the Atlantic not to the EU as her predecessors had done with the EPA but to Africa in the first-ever “AfriCaribbean Trade and Investment Forum (ACTIF) of Barbados”!!!
The theme of the Forum – One people, One Destiny, Uniting and Reimagining our Future” was jointly organised by the African Export-Import Bank – Afreximbank – that’s backed by all 50+ countries of Africa.
With a line of credit of US$500M, a change is a comin’!!
…with Nigeria
And even as the Caribbean’s linking with Africa’s financialization, a Nigerian delegation from Aiteo Group – -an integrated, global-focused energy conglomerate – just touched down to explore our diversification.
Let’s get it on!!
