The Movement for Social Justice (MSJ) said the Ministry of Education’s recent statement on its vacation revision programme provided tangible proof of government’s failure to fix the collapsed system.
On June 6, the ministry issued a statement on this year’s vacation revision programme which targets 15,500 students.
It said 5,500 students will be from those who are now in Standards 4 and 5, while 10,000 will be from among the 18,889 students who sat the SEA exam in March. This target group of the programme is students who got less than 50 per cent in the SEA.
The four-week programme for these 10,000 SEA students is to better prepare them to deal with secondary school which starts in the new school term in September.
A release from the MSJ on Sunday said these figures “tell the ugly truth” that in TT, the education system has failed.
If 10,000 out of 18,899 students got less than 50 per cent in the SEA , the MSJ said, this means that 53 per cent of the nation’s children failed the SEA. In 2022 it was a similar number, the MSJ said.
For those who claim that the high failure rate was due to covid and classes being held online due to schools being closed, “we cite the 2020 failure rate of 37 per cent. It cannot be that 37 per cent or 50 per cent of our children are failing at education, it is that the education system is failing them!”
The failure is not only at the level of the SEA exam, the MSJ added. At CSEC the story is the same.
The MSJ said that in 2020, 45 per cent of students did not pass the basic number of five subjects.
This does not include the number of students who entered form one but who didn’t make it to form five or who just did not sit the exams. Between 2020 and 2022, some 2,660 secondary school students “dropped out” of school, the MSJ claimed.
Between 2014-17, i.e. before covid, the number was 3,134.
MSJ leader David Abdulah said, “He has been Prime Minister for eight years, but has done nothing to change the education system to ensure that our education system enables every child and young person to attain their full human potential.
“All he does is to make statements and seek to cast blame on everyone else but his government. He, therefore, is part of the problem.”
Abdulah claim the “elites in society” have no problem with the education system as it is since their children all attend the so-called prestige schools and can afford all the “extra lessons.”
He said the elites can buy all the school books on time and purchase the laptops and other devices that are necessary to assist learning. “Children of the elites don’t have to hustle transportation to go to school and back home,” Abdulah said. The playing field is not level, he claimed.
Education may be available to all, but not all children have the same opportunities.
Abdulah is calling for a fundamental change to the system – something that can only happen “if we have bold, courageous and visionary leadership.”
He said such leadership that is prepared to challenge the status quo.
“Until we have such leadership, we shall continue to have four-week vacation remedial classes for the 50 per cent of children who were failed by the SEA system.
“And we will have to deal with the problem of youths being angry because society has failed them and therefore who feel they owe the rest of us nothing and are prepared to get something by any means necessary.”