Multiple choice exams are guessing games

THE EDITOR: I would like to respond to Wendy Campbell’s article on Sunday September 7, 2003, “The dictation passage that bowled thousands of SRP hopefuls.” She said most of the SRP applicants have passes at CXC level yet failed the dictation exercise. She went on to say that maybe these applicants passed through the multiple choice problems where they just had to “tick” the correct answer without doing any kind of hard thinking. I want to tell her she is absolutely correct. I have been a teacher for over 20 years at a secondary school and I am totally against multiple choice examinations because they are just guessing games. Also, there is the school-based assessment project (SBA) which students must hand up before the examination.

Students hardly fail that part because most of the time the teachers help the students. What makes it worse is that the teachers correct the project and send up the marks to CXC headquarters. These teachers do not want to look bad when the students fail, so they pass nearly everyone. These SBA projects carry nearly half of the marks and with good guessing at the multiple choice paper, the students can pass the exam without gaining many marks from the written examination. I taught some students this year and they can hardly read or spell properly and didn’t even make more than ten marks at their Easter term test, yet they pass the subjects with the SBA projects and the multiple choice questions. Something is wrong and no one is listening; they are only boasting about the number of schools being built, but the education system is failing. Stop these SBA projects and multiple choice exams now. Let the teachers work harder to get success. The teachers know the short cut to get passes in their subjects. If this is done, then one will see the real results from the CXC examinations as shown with the SRP exams. The SRP examination was a blessing in disguise, so that the Education Minister can see the product from the education system.

ANTHONY GITTENS
La Romaine