By EARYEL BOWLEG
Tribune Staff Reporter
ebowleg@tribunemedia.net
EDUCATION Minister Glenys Hanna-Martin said variations to the Bahamas High School Diploma programme would be announced soon to address issues that marginalise students.
A committee formed in July 2022 to review the programme has completed its work.
During an Office of the Prime Minister press briefing yesterday, Mrs Hanna Martin said she would return to Cabinet to address one issue before revealing plans for the programme.
“I believe that I will be able to shortly announce the variations or reforms that we will be implementing for the high school diploma because we know that they were anomalies,” she said.
“We know that it led to marginalisation of many young people. We also know that education has a much broader spectrum than a purely academic spectrum and so we’re looking at the range of learning without reducing standards.”
“So to answer your question, the work is complete. And we expect to announce within the next few days the final construct of the new high school diploma, which I believe will incentivise young people to excel and do well which is what we hope to do.”
Mrs Hanna Martin had previously highlighted flaws with the programme, such as how a student receiving an F grade in grade 10 could be excluded from getting a diploma later.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education hosted a town hall meeting last night on strengthening school attendance for learning recovery.
She said students from 140 schools participated in a test that assessed learning loss connected to the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.
She said 35,000 students were tested.
“(Teachers) now have scientific data for every child in that classroom” she said. “So the teacher now is able to, ‘okay, now I understand to the T what is happening with this child.’
“In terms of the actual results, I’m not able to speak globally, but I can tell you that we have found issues with literacy in a number of cases and say that where a child should be probably reading up here, they’re really here.”
“So the question is how do we now get them where they need to (be)?”
Comments
ohdrap4 1 year, 6 months ago
Just print a high school diploma and deliver for every live birth. Save time and money .
ExposedU2C 1 year, 6 months ago
The very warped Hanna-Martin has received PM Davis's permission to bestow a Ph.D degree on each and every D- educated student graduating from our failed public education system so that the overly generous remuneration and benefits they receive when hired by government is justified.
carltonr61 1 year, 6 months ago
Youl are too out of the loop and need diplomas on Christ's Humanity. The Covid Competant Authority leader maximus sole brain Minnisitis saw to the catastrophic passing on of human values through social growth and continuum of human structures. Three years gap in classrooms, lunch time, play time, academics, sports, has lead to a generation of some 35 000 kids that cannot enter job narkets not to faults of their own making. They are left homeless to hang out with the riff raff of life, the willfully dejected criminal non achievers ti kearn the ways of hustle, stolen car parts prostitution and just wanderers. They follow the street laws because they were denied entry into society and so face a life of hardship, deaths, diseases, waiting to die, unable to ever own a home. We are in serious trouble as we stand with the pains this young generation of hopelessness has been forced to live through. Once, promising careers in the thousands have become thrown into despair, death and crime. The pandemic created wholesale social destructions there must be a way.
ThisIsOurs 1 year, 6 months ago
I hope they dont drop Math and English. There is nothing more offputting than an athlete, politician, model, bishop, pastor who cant speak properly. Children need to know that if they want be beautician, basketball star, baseball star, actress, media personality, stewardess they need to be able to read and add. Certainly don't want to earn a bunch of money for someone to steal it all
sheeprunner12 1 year, 6 months ago
GHM needs to take up the HS diploma disaster with the man who is running the OPM and former MOE boss "I need some money for daddy's medicine" Fitzgerald .......... He was told that some of the HSD criteria was nonsense from the beginning, Lloyd didn't change anything and now GHM is going to patch the holes.
In the meantime 6 cohorts of graduates have already been damaged beyond repair.
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