Minister of Education and Technical and Vocational Training, the Hon. Glenys Hanna Martin recently spoke on the performance of Bahamian students in national examinations and the intention to partner with the University of The Bahamas and other organizations to research and address the issue.
Hanna-Martin said, “we don’t know yet why our students do not soar in these examinations, because we know we have the ability. So we are doing a number of research projects which I’ve spoken about quite a bit. One of them is by the University of The Bahamas, they talk about factors that impact student learning outcomes. What impacts a child doing well and not doing well. We got a preliminary report and we are reviewing that. Additionally, and we were hoping to sign today but I don’t think it is going to happen today, we are doing a study in Mathematics because our students tend not to do well in goodly numbers with Mathematics. So we are going to be looking at the factors that influence performance in Mathematics. In Science, that’s another challenging area we’re bringing in an education officer with singular focus for Science in primary school students to start them early.”
The Education Minister went further saying, “we’ve also determined that BGCSE is not the premier measurement of a child’s performance. The technical and vocational component and a lot of students do very well. They’re outstanding and they’re very bright young people, like one yesterday, he’s at BTVI doing construction and he’s working somewhere and he took that job because he said he wants to learn materials. So he’s very clear on why he’s doing what he’s doing. We are looking at the correlating or the parallel certifications in the technical and vocational exams so that when you see student performance, you might see the BGCSE, but you will also see maybe City and Guilds and other certifications which gives you an indication of how young people are fearing.”
