Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: It the best insight, instant feedback, accountability. The all new talk radio Freedom 106.5.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Change gears as we welcome to our program to discuss an issue that has been with us for quite some time. That's the SCA, the secondary entrance assessment exam, whether it's serving our purpose, whether we need to reform it and all of these things. Joining us now via Zoom Tutors, Tobago Officer. Let's welcome to our program, Brandon Roberts. Good morning to you. Welcome to our show.
[00:00:36] Speaker C: Good morning and good morning to your listeners.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: It's nice to have you with us here this morning. This is a topic that wears its head usually around sea time for the obvious reason, obviously people, the exam this, the exam that, the next, the other all kind of issues we have with sea when it's sea and then we kind of don't really hear anything about it until next time when we have sea again. But for some reason, and it's been reported in our daily newspapers, but I'll give you the opportunity to explain it to us. There's a suggestion that there needs to be reform and all of these things. Let's begin by telling us what's the perspective. I know that it's been in the newspaper and the news and everything else, but I wanted to tell it to our listeners. So for those who may have missed what's going on, we can start on the same platform with everyone understanding what the issues are. So tell us SCA reform needed. Question mark. Question mark. Question mark.
What are some of the issues?
[00:01:34] Speaker C: Right. So I like that you said that there is the attention to SCA when it's sea time and then it goes away and it speaks to the focus. You see the focus of the exam and not the children. If we focus on the children, there will be a continuous conversation. For the need to enhance education, we have set structure that would have meets. We have common entrance in the past. We change the name and call it secondary entrance assessment. But we are assessing our children to see which school best meets the need or we check in to see which prestige school you have to get 90%.
We randomly put persons in the other school. None of this I'm aware kids or literacy issues from primary school. We need to have continuous curriculum where those children who not have done so well in primary school have an opportunity to catch on. We don't have that after primary school life. You go to secondary school life and there's a curriculum there, none specific to those children. Hub and that so well.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: It'S an interesting discussion because it's one that we've been having since common entrance days.
And the common entrance exam, we were told, was too stressful for children and we needed to do away with it and blah, blah, blah. And then we introduced our next exam to replace an exam. That's the kind of sense we have, because we see the exam is difficult and the exam is stressful, and we just change the name from one exam to the next. But we left the exam, which means that all the things that stress children all before, with the first exam still there to stress them out with the second one. But here's what might be a fundamental question that needs to be answered.
When did we start having problems with the exam?
[00:03:34] Speaker C: Yes, sorry, that's kind of distracted there.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: Okay. The question was this, when did we start?
Either we started having problems with the exam, or the exam was no longer catering to our needs and was sufficient one way or the other. When did we realize that we have a problem with this thing called common entrance and SCA and all of these issues?
Did it gradually happen or was it always there? What was the situation?
[00:04:06] Speaker C: No, the exam is not so much the issue, really and truly, there is nothing that caters before the exam and after the exam. So we just have an exam as a main point. So identifying the issue is not so much at the exam itself, is the issue. We have a curriculum before, where we have these children cruise through their infantiators, standard four and so on, and they cram two or three months before the exam, where we have all the excitement of the parents and the teachers and goes in education looking to see which district is doing better than which district. And it's not so much the children.
The child comes last in this whole scenario. So there should be an assessment to go to secondary school.
However, if we don't tailor the curriculum to give our children the best opportunity to do well at school, we assess their performance from based on how they would have done. And then there are secondary schools that are structured in a way to have them filtered in seamlessly. So there's a continuity in the learning. Then SCA is just a pressure point where we rank schools. And even if we don't make it public, the SCA would then become something more of a challenge than a stepping stone. So it's not that the exam needs to be removed all entirely, but if we can alter the curriculum and the delivery of the curriculum, where an assessment of some nature is done at some advice level, so that we would see which secondary school kids. That's really the main point is. And then we would have at the secondary school level, where you just take off with your curriculum, where is the information and the feedback from the primary school teacher that this child either he writes a little too slow, that's why he's not doing well in the creative writing and those things. We don't have that feedback going forward to the secondary school. We have the form one teachers having a fresh cohort and moving forward the curriculum.
If we have a more focused curriculum, and not so much where the content is sporadic. So let's say we're doing subject verb agreement in the primary school, we go to the textbook, we get some sentences and we administer that. We encourage our students to participate. There's no particular focus. So it's not like we could say, right, we're going to use tourism. And the sentences we use it will be along the path of tourism or along the part of agriculture. Because you're trying to build that quality in the child one time, it's a little more meaningful to the child.
They could relate as part of the everyday life, whether it's fishing or whether it's the taxis. How much taxis you would need to transport this amount of workers to a particular institution, whether it's metal work or whatever. If we have a focus in our curriculum and not have it just so sporadically, you have your maths at math time and your sciences at science time, and there's no correlation. Those children don't have the perfect opportunity to be able to relate. And persons could admit if they check with that within themselves.
When you are able to relate a story, you have a better chance of understanding it, and not so much where you're drilling content and who catch the content. Catch the content and we put you in secondary schools based on those secondary schools as prestige or not.
[00:07:41] Speaker B: What are we really trying to achieve with this suggestion that there needs to be reform?
[00:07:51] Speaker C: Sorry.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: What is the goal? What is the focus of this suggestion that there needs to be a reform? Because from what I'm getting from you, you're suggesting that not all students are able to grapple properly with the curriculum as is at this point in time. And you're suggesting that there needs to be consideration for students who are slower or can't grasp the content at the point. But in any attempt at, let's say, education in any level, you will always have students who just can't keep up. You will always have students who aren't performing as well as others, regardless of the overtures.
Reforming the curriculum, is it going to fix the problem that you're identifying? Because what you're going to end up.
[00:08:51] Speaker C: With, and you could correct me if.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: I'm wrong, is you're going to have a curriculum that at this point in time you are saying there are some students who can't capture the information, then you're going to have, and I don't want to use the term dumb down the curriculum, but if we are to structure it in such a way that we cater to the slower students, because we probably should, they should get the extra attention. Everything else, the students who are at this point in time, which is the majority of the student population, the majority of the student population catches the information, is able to keep up with the pace of the curriculum and everything else. You're going to get students who are bored, you're going to get students who are not being challenged, you are going to get, I'm assuming, a situation where everything is being kept back to cater to the needs of a few. Do we need to do that or do we need to have speciality classes for the people who just can't deal with it the way it is at this point in time.
[00:09:53] Speaker C: Right?
So I'm not suggesting none of those things.
We do not need to slow down on the curriculum.
What we need to do is change our focus. So we are focusing on completing a curriculum, but it's children we're teaching. We are not teaching content. So what we need to do is take time to better understand our children. So the same mathematics that you're doing, and if I could just make reference to those young fellows on the block who selling the substance and so on, they understand mats. They understand mats in their language. I would have been playing some more posts with some older guys in the village and a couple of young guys came in and it was amazing to hear the language, the use of the metaphoric terms and so on. But they understand those things within their context. We have schooling where we have set content that does not relate to these.
So we need to utilize things within our own environment. Let's say for accounting, we go to the textbook, for example. Again, we have, let's say, Ben's enterprise. What does Ben's enterprise have to do with the channel learning that particular content? Let us use things in their space. So let's say we have the school maxis and so on.
Let's have a maxi business or some business within their school and have the children participate in actually doing a business in school and use the feedback from that towards the learning. So the suggestion really, and Trudy is not just having content as a standalone for children to get, because what we will be having is the belief that children are blank slates and we need to input information into them. It's not the case. Our children have their various levels of creativity and we need to tap in those things so that they will be able to do well at school.
We have a one size fits all system and those who fit will do well. So the child or the boy who will come and sit in class and be all cool and calm has a better chance of doing well than the child who needs to be.
If I could give another example.
[00:12:00] Speaker B: Okay, give me another drink.
Go ahead.
[00:12:04] Speaker C: Sorry.
[00:12:05] Speaker B: Go ahead. Let me hear you.
[00:12:07] Speaker C: If I could give another example with the football we have at football is an activity you do fall numbers. So get into groups of four, get into groups of five. And the children and the footballers are getting to those groups. Mathematics. But we segmented in this education system where football is only for football time and matters for math. We need to have a correlation with our teachers to have particular focus in our schools. So then the education that we are delivering the children to, and that's all we are coming for, to have that done. No persons would argue that schools could do that on their own, but no, they cannot. We need to have parents and the business sector on board with it. So I said the minister, but I've invited persons to adopt a school program and so on. Those are good initiatives. So we need to have the program established in the schools first that we can have the education centered around that would cater to the needs of our children.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: Okay, I'm trying to, in my understanding, I'm trying to ask the question so that if there are people who have questions in their minds as well, we get them answered. So what do you suggest we do? Because you're talking about amending the curriculum to cater to the needs of the children, correct?
[00:13:20] Speaker C: Yeah. What are those?
[00:13:25] Speaker B: Let's drill down into what those needs are and how amending the curriculum can address them.
[00:13:32] Speaker C: All right.
The schools don't have a focus, so we need to give schools a focus. So let's go and we give them a focus. So we ask those schools, as far as it's possible, to incorporate agriculture into the content of their teaching.
Metal work or woodwork or tourism or whatever aspect. Accounting as far as possible into aspect of their teaching. So creative writing, vocabulary, spending, whatever it is, they have a particular focus for implementation.
Schools need to have that program established and communicated to the various stakeholders so they understand is what this particular school is pushing. Agriculture. So you will see some more agriculture sentences and topics within your mats, within your accounting within these things. So at least there is something to relate to. There's a particular project that could come out of this. So in a vacation period like, no, if you're focusing on agriculture, there should be a project of the children going home to wherever crops or so they're going to start planting, or if it's time for reaping the reaping, they do that business part of it. So there's continuity to the education and not so much the accounts teacher doing his or her thing at his or her time. And there's no relation to the other teachers. But when you have a program, okay.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: I take the value of widening the scope that is presented to children and exposing them to a lot of different things. But how then do you structure an exam for 18,000 plus children when you have all of these variances that they've been exposed to?
[00:15:23] Speaker C: Right. So we point of our exam is not the point.
[00:15:28] Speaker B: But if the exam is not the point and changing the exam is not.
[00:15:31] Speaker C: The point, is the child.
[00:15:32] Speaker B: Okay, but just now, wait, I'm trying to understand in my mind if changing the exam is not the focus.
At the end of the day, regardless of what you expose all these children to, they're writing the same exam.
What are we really achieving?
No, that's a question. The exam remains the same regardless of what we expose 18,000 different children to what is being achieved?
[00:16:01] Speaker C: No, you see the content, the concepts must be taught. It's just the flavor using in teaching the concepts. So it's not that you're teaching less or more of something, you are taking two bites of it if you use tourism topics when you're teaching your maths, so that the child who is learning the math concept gets in the tourism language as well. So it's not that you're teaching less of a concept or more of a concept, you're just giving them an opportunity to have something to relate to. Now, the exam, in terms of assessing the understanding of the concepts, may not need to change if we change the way in which we teach.
If we don't change the way in which we teach and the focus, then the exam will just be misplaced and we just have this pass or field feel to this exam that there's no relationship with the primary school and the secondary school for continuity. So if we have a particular focus, we should be able to have a profile to go with that child when they go to the secondary school. And coming out of the exam, you'll have schools that would cater to the needs based on the analysis of the way in which the child performing the exam, which schools best fit them. I don't think in depth analysis goes into that. We just send persons based on a percentage that they would have received, whether they did well, any creative writing, or if it was a map for the language. We don't cater for that particular analysis.
[00:17:28] Speaker B: Yeah. This is where we're going to have to leave our interview, but I'm sure that as the discussion goes down and continues, we'll look at it again. I want to thank you for being with us here this morning and for giving us your perspective and your insight into this issue called the Sea and what could probably be done to make it more effective for our students. Thank you once again for being with us here this morning.
[00:17:51] Speaker C: You're most welcome.
[00:17:52] Speaker A: The best insight instant feed back accountability the all new talk radio Freedom 106.5.
