Garcia mum on Rambharat statement

Speaking on Saturday at a function to formally open Republic Bank’s new branch in Rio Claro, Rambharat said he knew of two students who had been placed in secondary schools despite achieving low scores in Mathematics and English respectively in this year’s Secondary Entrance Assessment (SE A). He said one of the students had scored 19 percent in Mathematics and the other 29 percent in English but were still placed in secondary schools. He added that he was “absolutely shocked” that students could get into secondary school with such low marks and said he did not think that some of the students in the country’s primary schools were being prepared for life in secondary school.

Asked about this following a function yesterday hosted by the University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT) at the National Academy for the Performing Arts (NAPA) in Port of Spain to announce the names of eleven citizens of this country who would receive honorary degrees at UTT’s graduation ceremony today and tomorrow, Garcia initially responded by saying only that Trinidad and Tobago has a system of universal secondary education and this meant “a gradual transition from primary school to secondary school.

“Some educators feel that secondary school is just another stage in the education of a student so there should be an orderly transition from primary school to secondary school.” Pressed to respond more directly to Rambharat’s criticism of the system of moving children into secondary school, Garcia said he would not contradict a fellow Cabinet member and hustled off to what his aides said was “a meeting.” Rambharat said he believed that some youths in rural communities are inadequately prepared to enter secondary school and appealed to Republic Bank, as a good corporate citizen, to help in the development of the young people in the Rio Claro community by helping ‘weak’ pupils in standard one and two in primary schools.