MANY schools frown on students sitting the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations in grade 10, but Education Minister Senator Ruel Reid says nothing is wrong with it.

“I will ask my team to have stakeholder discussions [about it]. [But] my policy prescription is that nothing is wrong with that. It is consistent with providing multiple opportunities for students,” Reid said at this week’s

Jamaica Observer Monday Exchange.

Moreover, he argued that when he sat on the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) with Chief Education Officer Dr Grace McLean, prior to his ministerial responsibilities, statistics indicated that “only 17.5 per cent of all the students in the Caribbean that sit CSEC, sit five or more subjects at one sitting in grade 11”.

This would suggest that the position of local schools to have students sit all their subjects in grade 11 is not shared by other Caribbean countries.

“Very few students can sit eight subjects at one sitting and do very well…,” he said. “A lot of us don’t understand how this CXC was developed. It was really for the brightest persons to be taken out of the system and you go on to sixth form, to go on to university. So it was never designed really for the average student. We don’t want to admit that, but it is the truth. Only the very bright students can do well at one time.

“I’ve looked at the numbers, and we have more students or persons out of the formal education system sitting CXC than those in [the system]. Students who don’t do well at grade 11 register to these evening classes and they build up and reach their five subjects or whatever amount they need to continue their studies,” Reid explained.

The education, youth and information minister further stated that in recent times CXC has had to modify many of the examinations, including maths, which, in part, explains the improved passes now being recorded.

Meanwhile, Reid said the reason for schools insisting that students sit all subjects in grade 11 is due largely to how secondary schools are ranked.

Subsequently, he said he has met with Educate Jamaica, a social enterprise education entity, for it to review how rankings are done.

“I had taken the proactive role to have negotiated with Educate Jamaica to change the way that they did the ranking, and to do what I call an accumulated index rather than a simple analysis of the final outcome at grade 11, which is where the problem arose. So once you do that, then there is no issue; the student can sit at any stage. What their simple matrix is accounting for is at the end of grade 11 — how many subjects the student passed with maths and English,” he explained.

Added Reid: “My simple message to anybody doing ranking is that we must have a say and give some guidelines. You can’t just go out there and decide to do ranking and create all kind of havoc in the system.”

The education, youth and information minister also added that moving to introduce School-Based Assessment (SBA) for maths and English would be a great help for students, and stated that the English SBA is set to come on stream in 2018, with maths following soon thereafter.