The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune

Once again, the national exams are around the corner and students are in preparation mode.

But let’s think about this BJC and BGCSE system.

People within the Ministry of Education always talk about the D Average, which has become the national disgrace of the system for years, is about to rear it’s ugly head again for 2020. Whilst some of the blame may fall on neglectful students and parents, the structure of these exams and the administration behind the system is mainly responsible for the disarray of education and the poor quality of life in the country.

All of these would have been easily avoided, but no one looks back and speaks up about how these exams work. Here’s the flaws on how the exams fail on so many levels.

For starters, the tests take place in one location for all the students of various schools to go to, instead of having the tests within each school with the papers distributed to all schools within the country.

Second, there’s the poor timing and miscommunication errors between the ministry and the schools which can cause students to miss the appropriate time or sometimes, the schedule would be changed without warning at all. It’s like this year’s exams, where it should have been late October or mid November instead of July or August.

The BGCSE tests, which is necessary for attending UB without an entrance exam and for overseas scholarship, is also severely flawed because someone created both Core and Extended papers and those who choose one of those papers by option ended up failing even if that person tried hard enough with coursework being done. This is because the teachers and/or the ministry’s administrators asked them to just take one paper, only to end up tricking the students into bitter failure. There’s a minority of students and teachers that warn others that they should take both papers, but this Core and Extended system shouldn’t be there.

Then there’s the BJCs, which the problem is about taking four tests to achieve a high school diploma. Whoever thought about this new diploma requirements should take a long, hard look at what they just sent to the Ministry of Education. All the other countries that have high school diplomas are at 12th grade level, but by using the BJCs as a requirement, most of our students’ highest grade levels average around 10th grade or even lower around 9th or 8th grade knowledge for diploma holders who have already graduated around 17 or 18 years old.

Most of the knowledge you get from these exams will never be used practically in life. Too many of BGCSE classes teach you about these absurd mathematic formulas and other nonessential topics. It’s like some people believe that all kids should be doctors, scientists, professors and lawyers. But in reality, not all children can do these ridiculous tasks and different positive life is something we clearly lack in the country. Many young adults require a simple job with decent wages for new families and independent workers, while many other adults can do more complex tasks.

The worst of all the flaws? Our two exams can only be credited to Canadian colleges; but outside of that, the BJCs and BGCSEs are worthless to many US colleges and others in Europe, along many Asian universities outside of China, Australia and New Zealand universities are almost out of the question. Many Bahamians who were educated with our system are forced to try six times harder than other nations to attend other universities or the ones in high-schools will have to find someone who can teach them the SATs.

So, yes, our exams are vastly worthless and almost useless to universities outside of Canada and some institutes in the US. That is the sorry, broken state of the Ministry of Education and these two exams that have led the Bahamians to bitter failure and the descent to misery.

If we’re to have a second chance of guiding the Bahamas to greatness. We’re going to rebuild the BJCs and BGCSEs from the ground up to teach teenagers and young adults practical skills that can be used for real life and for the teachers to improve themselves along with the schools.

The alternative is far-fetched, but if that doesn’t pan out as a success, then our current system will have to be burned down to ashes. Afterwards, we’ll ask for permission of many of the developed nations to import their successful exams into the Bahamas and we will never again create another broken system to lead Bahamians into failure.

The Bahamas doesn’t need to continue suffering a D Average parade of constant fails, mockery and poor standards of living for more than 40 years. It’s time to reform our exams to give young people usable skills or shut them down for good and have exams from other nations teaching Bahamians to succeed instead.

AMMAKA RUSSELL

Nassau,

July 10, 2020.