Ronald Thwaites | Trying a t’ing

She is in the final stage of her high-school education, having to make a decision a few weeks ago whether or not to defer sitting the CAPE exams, the results of which, she and her family hopes and dreams, will be the passport to a subsidised seat in the Faculty of Medicine Science at The University of the West Indies.

Sandy is going on 18, and is a student in a mediocre-rated high school. The facilities at her school for science are only so-so. From grade seven, she felt the disappointment of her family that she had not made the cut for the top-rank girls’ school they wanted for her.

She has had three different chemistry teachers since fourth form, and the guy who teaches physics is moonlighting from another job and comes only sometimes. So Sandy borrows notes from, and tries to study with, her friend who goes to Immaculate.

If it works out, Sandy will be the first in her family to go to university. Since there is no way that her police corporal mother and tradesman father can afford the over $3 million-a-year tuition cost, nor is there anyone in their circle who could guarantee that quality of student loan, her only hope is to do so well in the exams that she will merit a scarce government-supported placement.

The trouble is that since March last year, Sandy has not been in school. She has done her best online, but now that the hurry-up, exam-soon-reach-you, face-to-face classes have resumed, she is discouraged at the many topics in the syllabus which she has not covered.

So she is seeking advice whether to defer exams this summer and hopefully, prepare better next year or to go ahead and ‘try a t’ing,’ fully well aware, as are her teachers, that she is really not ready and will not be able to show her best.

LIFE-ALTERING SITUATION

Hers is a life-altering decision. And she is not alone. Tens of thousands of Jamaican and Caribbean young people, bearing within themselve the future of our nations, find themselves in similar dilemmas.

If she postpones, will she still have a place in school to resit? Will the Government pay for the extra year? If she goes ahead but gets poor or indifferent marks, will the university take her circumstances into consideration?

That’s what the insidious, silent COVID-19, combined with some short-sighted and indecisive policy choices, are causing to be foisted upon Sandy and her kind by circumstances and by officials whose bread is already buttered.

The Caribbean and Jamaica’s teachers’ unions ask us to support that the exam topics should be pre-disclosed, the questions require a lesser command of material than is usual and would persuade us that the results will be as credible as ever. Of course, schools, teachers and governments will avoid the embarrassment of confronting the reality of drastic underachievement.

In that effort to be sympathetic, unwittingly perhaps, they are consigning Sandy, and the rest of us, to underperformace and long-term detriment.

If you have not covered the required syllabus and been tested fairly and credibly on it, how can you be graded as if you had? What weight will be given to Sandy’s certificates ‘earned’ in these regrettable conditions.

Look here: it is a bad thing when someone ‘samfies’ you. It is irredeemably worse when we samfi ourselves.

The admirable public servant Dr Wayne Wesley of the Caribbean Examinations Council has been heard saying that in the marking of the exam papers, consideration will be given to the extenuating circumstances of the times. That’s like awarding the gold medal if you were winning at 50 metres, even if you didn’t finish the course!

So, are we going to mark on the curve and plenty will get grades they really haven’t earned? Is that going to elevate Jamaica to be a high-skilled, competitive investment destination? Check us out in 10 years’ time.

AGONY OF THE MOMENT

Nothing can take away the agony of the moment for students like Sandy and the society. But crooked and short-term thinking will make things worse for the future. If we convey to our students that half-achievement can be as good as full performance, we will be schooling them in the evil of self-deception.

For months we have been refusing to acknowledge to ourselves that we have lost most of the last year of teaching and learning. Now, when denial is no longer possible, our leaders are trying to find ways to avoid the full enormity of the problem.

Sandy is among those who have managed the best. At least her big sister had sent her a device from New York, and her living-together parents had afforded her connectivity. There was food at home in the days, a table in the alcove of the bedroom where she could study. And the pretty boy who wanted to invite himself over to disturb her had ketch fraid of Sandy’s police mother.

What about the hundreds of thousands without such congenial opportunity? About two months ago, no less than the prime minister told the nation that a study was being done to determine the level of learning loss. It was to be done in short order. How so, I can’t imagine. But what has that enquiry uncovered? The public has a right to its every detail.

Are we planning without the data we said were necessary? Stop fooling around with people’s future! As it is, June month is upon us, there are no certain plans for July and August for other than the exam students and just the hope that ‘normality’ will miraculously return in September. Where is the ;resilient corridor’ for schools?

In the same vein, there needs to be a full discussion about the range and depth of the questions posed in the Primary Exit Profile tests administered last week. Will the results disclose which of our grade-six children are sufficiently literate and numeracy to handle high-school studies? This is not an administrative matter which can be fudged to rationalise the placement process, while leaving the lost-learning problem to high-school teachers.

Please, can we take the time this summer and incur the expense to assess each child in the grade-six cohort as to their academic level, as well as their emotional stability and social capacity, as the basis for assigning them to a high school or engaging them in a remedial programme? That exercise alone could, in 10 years, yield a three per cent per annum growth in GDP.

In the meanwhile, Sandy is cramming as much as she can and has decided, a worried furrow on her young, beautiful, expectant, ambitious brow, to try a t’ing.

“Sir, you will help me again next year if I don’t do well?”

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.