Guyana
Educational experimentation
Friday, January 27th 2006
This year will be the final year of the Secondary Schools Entrance Examination (SSEE) in its current form. From next year 11-year-olds will be undergoing an assessment, although exactly what form this will take is not something which has been made public as yet; perhaps it will end up being very similar to the current Common Entrance exam.
Whatever the case it can be said that the pupils who undergo the assessment will have already been exposed to two others at an earlier stage in their schooling, and the final result will depend on how they have performed in all three - although each test will have a different weighting.
The general aim is to make secondary schooling available to everyone - no problem there - and to abolish any kind of school selection based on ability; every pupil attaining secondary school age will be expected to attend a school in the vicinity. The new arrangements were partially implemented for the first time last year.
They could not be fully implemented, because there are as yet not enough secondary school places available, and the marks obtained at SSEE were therefore used to place children at the senior secondary schools in addition to some other named secondary schools.
These columns have raised questions before about the advisability of placing children in schools on the basis of assessments made over a period of years; it seems on the face of it, for obvious reasons, inherently unfair. We have also reflected on what the long-term plans are for the senior secondary schools, and whether the Ministry of Education has it in mind to make any arrangements for gifted children as well as those with learning difficulties who cannot manage the pace of an average class.
The education authorities have had nothing to say on these matters as yet, and so perhaps they have not made any final decisions.
One feels that the Ministry might be best advised to make haste slowly until it can fully observe what is happening in England and Wales, on whose system our own experimentation appears to be based. The English abolished their Common Entrance exam many years ago, and introduced arrangements in the state education sector whereby pupils simply graduated to a school in their area of residence - the catchment area principle.
It was not a success in terms of lifting educational standards, quite the opposite in fact. As a consequence, a succession of governments have been tampering with the system ever since.
The removal of the competition element does affect standards, and the authorities in due course introduced what are called League Tables, which publish the performances of the various schools. This has had the unintended consequence of causing the more affluent to move to areas where the schools have a solid reputation, thereby driving up real estate values.
Furthermore, a recent report from the Sutton Trust has said that the most successful comprehensive schools in England are socially selective, and that a disproportionately low number of poorer pupils attend the 200 highest performing comprehensives.
According to the BBC, previous studies had shown that those comprehensives which ran their own admissions were more successful, but at the same time were less likely to take poorer pupils. The Sutton report too alluded to the success of both single sex and faith schools, although here too, interestingly, there was under-representation of the poorest pupils.
When Mrs Thatcher came into office, she attempted an assault on the uniformity of the state system by introducing schools which could opt out, so to speak, called the Grant Maintained Schools. When the Labour government returned in 1997, it promptly abolished these. Now, to the glee of the Conservatives, Prime Minister Blair is proposing to introduce Trust Schools, which among other things will be independent of the local education authorities, and will have greater freedom over admissions and the curriculum. It is proposed that subsidised buses will take children from low income families a distance of up to six miles to attend these schools.
In certain key respects the proposed Trust Schools will be very similar to the Grant Maintained Schools, and the Prime Minister now finds himself in the strange position of facing a possible revolt of 90 of his back-bench MPs, while being able to depend on Tory support.
However, even before the latest proposals for educational reform were made public, the Labour government had introduced what are known as specialist schools, which, as their name suggests, place emphasis on particular (mostly) academic areas. As things stand, these schools are allowed to select up to ten per cent of pupils by aptitude.
The bottom line is that the abolition of aptitude testing at age eleven, while clearly imperfect, has not raised the standard of education of the poorest pupils in England and Wales. This is despite the introduction of assessments in the primary schools, which we appear to be copying. It might be noted in passing, that following objections from parents in Wales, one of these assessments has now been dropped.
We too have had a great deal of tinkering with the education system over the years, with less than successful results. If the English, with all the resources at their disposal, still cannot get it right, we are unlikely to do so by following exactly in their footsteps. In addition, we too have not yet come up with viable arrangements which will raise the educational levels of poorer children, although at least by looking at what happens in other places, we might get an idea of what doesn't work.
In any case, what has to be recognized is that in our case, no matter what system is in place, without a sufficient number of competent teachers to staff the schools nothing will work.
Educational experimentation
Friday, January 27th 2006
This year will be the final year of the Secondary Schools Entrance Examination (SSEE) in its current form. From next year 11-year-olds will be undergoing an assessment, although exactly what form this will take is not something which has been made public as yet; perhaps it will end up being very similar to the current Common Entrance exam.
Whatever the case it can be said that the pupils who undergo the assessment will have already been exposed to two others at an earlier stage in their schooling, and the final result will depend on how they have performed in all three - although each test will have a different weighting.
The general aim is to make secondary schooling available to everyone - no problem there - and to abolish any kind of school selection based on ability; every pupil attaining secondary school age will be expected to attend a school in the vicinity. The new arrangements were partially implemented for the first time last year.
They could not be fully implemented, because there are as yet not enough secondary school places available, and the marks obtained at SSEE were therefore used to place children at the senior secondary schools in addition to some other named secondary schools.
These columns have raised questions before about the advisability of placing children in schools on the basis of assessments made over a period of years; it seems on the face of it, for obvious reasons, inherently unfair. We have also reflected on what the long-term plans are for the senior secondary schools, and whether the Ministry of Education has it in mind to make any arrangements for gifted children as well as those with learning difficulties who cannot manage the pace of an average class.
The education authorities have had nothing to say on these matters as yet, and so perhaps they have not made any final decisions.
One feels that the Ministry might be best advised to make haste slowly until it can fully observe what is happening in England and Wales, on whose system our own experimentation appears to be based. The English abolished their Common Entrance exam many years ago, and introduced arrangements in the state education sector whereby pupils simply graduated to a school in their area of residence - the catchment area principle.
It was not a success in terms of lifting educational standards, quite the opposite in fact. As a consequence, a succession of governments have been tampering with the system ever since.
The removal of the competition element does affect standards, and the authorities in due course introduced what are called League Tables, which publish the performances of the various schools. This has had the unintended consequence of causing the more affluent to move to areas where the schools have a solid reputation, thereby driving up real estate values.
Furthermore, a recent report from the Sutton Trust has said that the most successful comprehensive schools in England are socially selective, and that a disproportionately low number of poorer pupils attend the 200 highest performing comprehensives.
According to the BBC, previous studies had shown that those comprehensives which ran their own admissions were more successful, but at the same time were less likely to take poorer pupils. The Sutton report too alluded to the success of both single sex and faith schools, although here too, interestingly, there was under-representation of the poorest pupils.
When Mrs Thatcher came into office, she attempted an assault on the uniformity of the state system by introducing schools which could opt out, so to speak, called the Grant Maintained Schools. When the Labour government returned in 1997, it promptly abolished these. Now, to the glee of the Conservatives, Prime Minister Blair is proposing to introduce Trust Schools, which among other things will be independent of the local education authorities, and will have greater freedom over admissions and the curriculum. It is proposed that subsidised buses will take children from low income families a distance of up to six miles to attend these schools.
In certain key respects the proposed Trust Schools will be very similar to the Grant Maintained Schools, and the Prime Minister now finds himself in the strange position of facing a possible revolt of 90 of his back-bench MPs, while being able to depend on Tory support.
However, even before the latest proposals for educational reform were made public, the Labour government had introduced what are known as specialist schools, which, as their name suggests, place emphasis on particular (mostly) academic areas. As things stand, these schools are allowed to select up to ten per cent of pupils by aptitude.
The bottom line is that the abolition of aptitude testing at age eleven, while clearly imperfect, has not raised the standard of education of the poorest pupils in England and Wales. This is despite the introduction of assessments in the primary schools, which we appear to be copying. It might be noted in passing, that following objections from parents in Wales, one of these assessments has now been dropped.
We too have had a great deal of tinkering with the education system over the years, with less than successful results. If the English, with all the resources at their disposal, still cannot get it right, we are unlikely to do so by following exactly in their footsteps. In addition, we too have not yet come up with viable arrangements which will raise the educational levels of poorer children, although at least by looking at what happens in other places, we might get an idea of what doesn't work.
In any case, what has to be recognized is that in our case, no matter what system is in place, without a sufficient number of competent teachers to staff the schools nothing will work.
© Stabroek News
