IN rare consensus, the government, opposition and the teachers’ union have condemned schools that force fifth form, or grade 11, students to re-sit external exams they have already passed in fourth form.

The schools are bullying students to repeat exams, education experts say, to boost school ratings.

Hundreds of children islandwide, who sit some exams early, are said to be affected.

The schools insist that the students either re-do the exams or be denied graduation, even for those who have already passed the subjects at level I or II.

Education officials confirmed that at least one school was reported to it recently for the practice, after four parents of students complained to the Sunday Observer that the principal had dismissed their objections.

The matter was later dealt with between the school and the ministry.

Anecdotally, however, a number of high schools are said to engage in similar behaviour of registering students for subjects they have already passed, and have done so for decades.

“The schools are getting away with murder, and the ministry must not only say it to the schools, it must put it in writing,” said Andrew Holness, Opposition spokesman on education.

Holness urged the education ministry to act aggressively to stem the practice, saying it should “step up to the plate and issue the relevant instructions to the offending schools.”

“If any such policy exists, it cannot be mandatory. Re-sitting has to be optional and that is if you get a grade two or three and you want to get a better grade,” he argued.

“You cannot ask a child with grade one in a subject to re-sit, or even ask them to do mock exams. That is asinine.”

The education ministry, though more tempered in its comments, agreed that some form of intervention was required.

“It is wrong and it must stop now,” said Dorrett Campbell, the education ministry’s director of communication. “It is neither a position within the ministry nor a policy of the ministry.”

The chief education officer, Campbell added, has promised an investigation of the practice, saying that a forced re-sit could end up sullying a student’s record.

At CXC, the last grade is the final grade.

“So a child could re-sit a subject and come out with a lower grade and it’s that last grade that counts,” said Campbell.

To force a student with a grade one pass to re-sit, she noted, “cannot make sense.”

The Jamaica Teachers Association, meantime, is suggesting that parents consider fighting the matter in the courts. “Until and unless it is challenged in courts, it could continue. But it should stop right now,” said Adolph Cameron, JTA general secretary.

Attorney-at-law Wentworth Charles who said as a student he too had faced the problem, told the Sunday Observer that such legal challenges against forced re-sits were likely to succeed.

“There is nothing in law which gives the schools the right to make and carry out such a threat,” Charles said.

The Education Code itself is silent on the issue of guidelines for graduation.

Cameron suggested that some schools were insisting on the re-sits because they were busy playing a numbers game, to ensure a high performance ranking.

“Any number of children who sit and pass the examination in fourth form is part of the cohort of fifth form. But if the children are in fifth form for other subjects, and do not sit the exams in that year, they are still considered part of the fifth form cohort,” Cameron explained.

While the previous years cohort would “look good because of the good passes, the following year’s would not look as good,” he said.

Education researcher Dr Dennis Minott, who ranks high schools yearly based on the performance of students in the external exams, says the schools are not averse to using subterfuge to coerce students into re-sits.

“The schools tell the children that universities like to see how many subjects they can pass in one sitting. Rubbish,” Minott said.

The Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) does not require students to indicate their grade level for exams, says Campbell – only age, gender and centre – neither does the education ministry.

“Competency, based on the schools recommendation, is what is used to guide our decision,” said the communication director.

Some fourth formers do the exams under the auspices of their schools, but others sit at private centres, so no centralised data exists on the number of students who opt for early exams.

Minott says however that Mathematics and English Language are the two most popular subjects – two of the four CXC exams fully paid for each year by government.

Like Cameron, Charles said many schools wanted bragging rights when children receive multi-distinctions in external examinations.

“Re-sitting therefore, appears only an act for the schools to look good, because the student would have already demonstrated the capacity for excellence,” said the attorney.

Cameron meantime says the media should pay greater attention to exam results that go into published rankings, and that questions should be asked of main researchers Ralph Thompson and Minott, whether their findings were informed by the performance of both grade 10 and 11 cohorts.

To that Minott said his cohorts were drawn from the education ministry’s master list, which does not differentiate between fourth and fifth formers in exams.

virtuee@jamaicaobserver.com