The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Good-paying jobs are beyond the reach of too many Bahamians with “more than 30 percent of students” sitting BJC mathematics and English exams “failing to achieve” the required standards and grades.

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), unveiling a $100,000 “technical” consultancy designed to better align “the relevance” of Bahamian education with the country’s skills needs, again highlighted how almost one-third of this country’s population is being left behind because they lack the basic abilities that are critical for a productive workforce that is able to compete globally in the digital era.

Emphasising that the challenges begin long before students reach Bahamas General Certificate of Secondary Education (BGCSE) level, the multilateral lender identified the failure of many young Bahamians to meet the necessary “competency level” in English and mathematics in the Bahamas Junior Certificate (BJC) exams.

“The Bahamas Junior Certificate examinations in grade nine show that, from 2016 to 2020, on average, more than 30 percent of the students sitting for the exams failed to achieve the expected competency level in English and math,” the IDB asserted, adding that its consultancy will help with the “digital transformation” of Bahamian education.

“At the same time, in 2020, the Bahamas introduced the virtual learning portal, an official LMS and repository of educational materials. This is an extremely promising resource given Internet penetration in the country reaches a fairly high 94.4 percent,” the IDB added. 

“The purpose of this technical co-operation is to support the Ministry of Education and Technical and Vocational Training (MOETVT) diagnose and reinforce the digital skills of their teachers to make a better use of its installed capacity, with a focus on the strengthening of foundational skills.

“This technical consultancy will develop and implement a pilot programme for digital literacy and educational technology training for educators in The Bahamas, enhancing their capacity to integrate digital tools into their teaching practices and improve student learning outcomes.”

However, the brief IDB paper exposes the extent to which The Bahamas has made little progress over the past two decades in both reforming its education system and improving student skills and grades such that they graduate from high school with the necessary qualities that employers are looking for.

The report suggests that, at grade nine, close to one in every three students struggles to meet basic English and mathematics standards - the critical so-called ‘soft skills’ and customer service qualities that Bahamian employers need. In effect, the BJC results indicate that one-third of students are not attaining the functional numeracy and literacy levels needed to make them productive members of society.

Peter Goudie, head of the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employment Confederation’s (BCCEC) labour division, told Tribune Business of the IDB report’s findings: “That’s something we bring up in most meetings with the minister [of education] and where we can. We also do it through the National Tripartite Council.

“We have too many young people who are not able to give us the skills to be able to hire them and train them to the levels we need. The Ministry of Education has to address this. It’s been this issue if ‘D-’ average at BGCSEs, and that’s only those that write the exam. When you have a ‘D-’ average and not everybody writing the exam, you have a problem.”

Many students exit high school with just a leaving or attendance certificate, while others either drop out or leave early. Mr Goudie said one consequence is that Bahamian employers, unable to find the talent, skills and work ethic they require locally, are forced to turn to work permits and expatriate labour more than they wish even though this comes at greater cost to their business.

“It’s very frustrating as a business person when you can’t find the right help,” he explained. “Then you get nailed in the press because of the number of work permits. However, we only need work permits because we cannot find people with the right skills. We don’t apply for work permits out of spite. Work permits are expensive; we don’t want the expense of work permits if we don’t have too.

“I don’t know why there’s such a gap. I will make one comment, but please be careful with this one; social promotion does not help people achieve more or higher grades.... If they cannot pass grade one, why let them move forward to grade two, which they will not pass, and grade three, which they will not pass.”

Asked about the impact for the Bahamian economy’s competitiveness, of which workforce productivity is a key component, Mr Goudie replied: “There’s two things. Number one, we have got people who are not well-educated, and that is not good for anybody.

“If they don’t have the proper education and proper skills, then they cannot get jobs, and if you cannot get good jobs you are not going to make a lot of money. There’s a direct correlation with all of this. We have got to something about our grade average. We have got to do something about our education standards.”

Conceding that productivity levels are generally “terrible”, Mr Goudie said: “That’s exactly why we’re going to be setting up a Productivity Council and National Apprenticeship Programme. Part of the Productivity Council will be customer care, and the Apprenticeship Programme will hopefully address some of it. It won’t make it perfect but it will address some of it.

“We’re going to start with the maritime industry because there’s so many jobs in the maritime industry that can be filled. That will then go out to other industries, but it’s clearly obvious that we need to get the Apprenticeship Programme up and running. Yet we need to address the results with BJCs and BGCSEs.”

The IDB briefing indicates that little has changed since the private sector first voiced its fears about the quality of Bahamian high school graduates entering the workforce with its 2005-2006 report: Bahamian youth - the untapped resource.

In more recent years, just 13 percent of students obtained five BGCSE grades of ‘C’ or higher in the 2022 summer exams. Some 633 students gained five BGCSE grades that were ‘C’ or higher out of 4,906 total students who sat the exams that summer. That, though, was hailed by Ministry of Education officials as a 15 percent increase over the prior year when just 550 met this benchmark.

A highly-educated, skilled and agile workforce is critical to The Bahamas’ economic prospects in the service-oriented export industries in which it competes as an international business and financial centre, focused on tourism and financial services. Yet every year there have been concerns over how many of the estimated annual 5,000 high school leavers, especially those entering the workforce, will find gainful employment.

Some 392 students, or just 7.99 percent of those that took the BGCSEs in 2022, earned a ‘C’ or higher in maths, English and a science, further serving to highlight concerns about the literacy and numeracy levels of high school graduates.  Another 952, or 19.4 percent, gained a minimum ‘D’ grade in at least five subjects.

The private sector’s Coalition for Education Reform in that 2005-2006 report, drawn up by economist Ralph Massey, revealed that the average mean math and English BGCSE grades for 2004 were ‘E’ and ‘D-’ respectively.

Highlighting real-life examples of functional literacy, or the lack of it, among Bahamian job seekers, the report said: “A recent high school graduate in a beginning class at the Bahamas Technical & Vocational Institute answered ‘22’ to the question ‘What does 2 times 2 equal?’ The next question ‘What does 7 times 7 equal?’ was answered ‘14’.

“A Bahamian executive makes it a practice to interview all job candidates in his departments; and during each interview he always leaves the office and asks the candidate to write a brief paragraph that includes his name and a description of his education and/or work experience. Invariably the applicant cannot write a paragraph with clear sentences, correctly arranged and with minimal spelling errors.”

Turning to the economic implications, the Coalition’s report added: “The Bahamian businessman cannot help but agree with the BGCSE report that the overall level of academic achievement of high school graduates is ‘totally unacceptable’.

“He cannot help but worry about a world that is becoming ever more ‘knowledge driven’. Improvements in productivity can come with the adoption of new technologies that require increased worker and managerial skills, and survival may be possible only by exploiting new service industries requiring greater job skills. In discussing the BGCSE reports and the untapped resource, one can only conclude that something significant must be done with the Bahamian educational system.”