CAPE raises vexing questions and issues

THE EDITOR: An open letter to the Minister of Education. CAPE — The latest folly in our Education policy. It has come to my knowledge that Secondary Schools in Trinidad and Tobago  now doing the GCE Advanced Level examinations have been mandated by the Ministry of Education to implement CAPE (Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination) by the year 2006. Indeed, many schools (particularly the most prestigious ones) have already taken the plunge, and soon, many of our students will be writing an examination around which there still prevails much skepticism, controversy and misunderstanding.

The advent of CAPE in lieu of the GCE “A” Levels, raises many vexing questions and issues. Teachers must now deliver the intense curriculum within a specific time frame. In most subject areas, internal adjustments form the bulk of the content to be covered and, at every stage, the students’ work must be vigilantly and closely scrutinised by the teacher. Undoubtedly, this has serious implications for staffing and for infrastructural development at many of the nation’s schools. Additional staff is definitely required to allow for the smooth transition of the process. In most instances however, the Ministry of Education has not provided the infrastructural framework required to facilitate such changes.

Parents are also quite understandably perturbed about the implications of CAPE for their children’s tertiary education. The CAPE syllabi is generally insular, and subjects such as Caribbean Studies which replaces General Paper with a heavy focus on Caribbean history and sociology, does not equip the Caribbean student with knowledge of current world affairs and topical issues. How therefore, are these students to fare outside the Caribbean arena? Those desirous of obtaining tertiary education at one of the more prestigious international universities may have to settle for a place, if perchance they are afforded one at the University of the West Indies or, hope that they are admitted at the University of Trinidad and Tobago, now still in its embryonic stages, especially since formal acceptance and accreditation for CAPE has not been forthcoming from most recognised international tertiary institutions.

Please Madam Minister, as we strive to empower our people and our region as well, let us not open another Pandora’s box in the education debacle. In the 1970’s Junior and Senior Secondary Schools were constructed to facilitate education of the masses. Today, we are trying to reverse that process and deshift/convert these schools respectively. In 2000, Universal Secondary Education was the crowning point of this error. Today we are reeling in the throes of indiscipline and violence in many of the nation’s schools because we evaluated progress in terms of numbers instead of standards.

Let us not repeat history again! Let us learn from our mistakes of the past. Let us be bold and independent enough to discontinue the promotion of spontaneous educational fancies/whims because they satisfy a condition of some world bank loan or, because this initiative will provide political mileage in the next general elections. Is it any wonder then, that education is in such a mess today? It is high time that we take a genuine interest in the welfare of the nation’s children and think about the quality of leaders we would like to emerge in the country and the region.

HAJI RALPH D KHAN
San Fernando