As the nation’s students make preparation for the commencement of the new academic year, Education Minister Kenson Casimir says a concerted effort is being made to ensure that all is in place prior to the first day of school for the thousands heading back to the classroom.
Casimir spoke of rehabilitation works currently ongoing at most of the local education facilities stressing that is desire was to ensure that all is completed so as not to affect a seamless launch of the new academic year.
The education minister was also hopeful that efforts to successfully deliver the government promise to provide laptops to secondary school students would see a timely execution. “We do intend as a ministry of education to ensure that every student walking into form one receives the laptop within the first week. In time past we’ve had to wait because of procurement issues but we took the approach that very early we were going procure those laptops so that by the end of the first week every student in form one would be ready to go, ready to do what they need to do in terms of the use of technology and be on par with the rest of the world.”
Asked about the discussion surrounding CXC’s intention to discontinue School Based Assessments {SBA} for non-practical examinations, the minister seemingly agreed that the discussion is a must have. “CXC has been in existence for a very long time and they’ve always tried to be in tune with the time. They realized and identified some of the issues we have had with the assessment of students and their progress and they’ve tried from time to time to tweak certain activities that are ongoing to make it better, make it more modern and to ensure that we are getting it right in our countries.” Casimir agreed that there was some merit to the proposal but admitted that there were also concerns going forward.