THE principal of Cornwall College, one of the oldest high schools in Jamaica, believes the Government should abolish the hated Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) and find a more efficient way of placing students into secondary schools.

Denham McIntyre’s call — made at the Cornwall College Old Boys’ Association annual Gala Dinner and Awards Banquet, held at the University of the West Indies Mona Visitors’ Lodge on Saturday — adds to growing discontent over the exam, which is used to move students from the primary to the secondary education level.

“Government should abolish the GSAT programme and find better ways of placing students in secondary schools… It does not make sense for us to just take up everybody, put them in the same schools — achieving and non-achieving — and say that they are in high schools,” McIntyre said.

The principal said he was basing his suggestion on the results of a Mathematics and English Language diagnostic test conducted on 252 seventh grade Cornwall College students last September. The tests revealed that most of the students did not meet the more then 100-year-old school’s usual 80 per cent entry requirement, he said.

“At the end of that [English] diagnostic test, we had 189 students having marks between 50 and 80 per cent. The others had GSAT scores between 80 and 100 per cent,” McIntyre revealed. “In Math, 247 of those students scored between zero and 80 per cent. The others had scores between 80 and a 100 per cent.”

Against these realities, he said, “I submit the view that no effort should be spared to strengthen the infant and primary schools programmes by improving the quality of the physical plant of schools, and reintroduce the categories of traditional high schools, comprehensive high, and secondary vocational high schools.”

The best way for addressing the failure of some secondary schools “goes back to my call for the best teachers to be placed in primary and infant schools”, he argued to loud applause from the audience.

Other educators and parents have been harshly critical of the GSAT, saying that the heavy pressure it places on students over the two days on which they sit the test often results in an incorrect measure of the students’ knowledge.

Consistent complaints about the test have led the education ministry to commission an assessment of its curriculum and method of testing.

Last month, Education Minister Ronald Thwaites said that the assessment, being conducted by a team of local and international experts, should be ready within another eight months.

Thwaites had argued that because the examination is such a “high-stake” one for students, parents and teachers, more emphasis should be placed on critical thinking and reasoning capacity, rather than on students’ ability to recall information.

“What we are trying to test is the students’ readiness for secondary education,” Thwaites said. “We need to look also at the abilities of that student, so a fundamental question which is being asked by the ministry is, ‘does the GSAT satisfy those criteria?’ We are convinced that it does to a significant measure, but as in any system, it needs to be kept under constant review.”

On Saturday night, McIntyre used much of his address to outline what he said were “significant achievements” by Cornwall College students in the last Caribbean Examinations Council exams, and in several local and international competitions this year.

He said, however, that more importance needs to be placed on developing the school’s co-curricular activities.

In the meantime, McIntyre said the school will, in September, implement the first phase of a US$220,000 solar-powered system, which will see the institution saving some J$5 million annually in electricity costs.

That project will be paid for by the United States branch of the Old Boys’ Association, he said, and urged the body to discuss with the school board effective means of reintroducing student boarding which, he insisted, instils a sense of loyalty and assists in student development.

Guest speaker at the function, minister of youth and culture Lisa Hanna, while acknowledging McIntyre’s call, added that more effort is needed in communicating to young people Jamaica’s economic plight, and their responsibility to find innovative ways of addressing such issues through education.

“If you are looking at a country that has to come out of the stranglehold of debt [achieve] economic growth, and really seek and find winners to grow this economy, we have to have an educated and productive workforce to do it,” she said.

“That workforce has to be our young people, and one of the things that we have to recognise is that we have to change the conversation with our young people. We need to start telling them the truth, communicate in ways and context of the country they are living in,” she said, adding that more adults need to become student mentors.

More adults need to start imparting on the students a passion for not only their self-development but that of the country at large, she said.

Three Cornwall College past students were awarded at the function — businessmen Leighton McKnight and Carlton Chin; and stage director and producer Lennie Little-White.