‘A’ LEVEL RESULTS CREDIT TO TT EDUCATION SYSTEM

The placing by 37 young Trinidadians and Tobagonians among the world’s top 420 students in this year’s Advanced and Advanced Subsidiary Level Results of the University of Cambridge International Examinations should be viewed as a credit to the country’s education system. The sheer weight of the success of the 37 and the achievement of the education system in producing them, that their success represents, must be seen in the context of students of Trinidad and Tobago, a Third World country of some 1.5 million people, being in the forefront of young achievers from 92 countries. And what is of added weight is that the 92 countries include such developed nations as the United States of America, Japan, the United Kingdom and Switzerland.

We are dealing here with countries with facilities far superior to our own, and with a history of educational development, major libraries, around the corner access to a wide range of tertiary halls of learning and where at any one time Universities across their lands are holding a host of in depth discussions on crucial subjects of the day. Teaching techniques are constantly being examined closely and updated, and billions of dollars spent annually to produce the best students in the world. And where they fall short, billions more spent to attract and hold achievers from Third World countries such as Trinidad and Tobago. But what the country has lacked in money it has made up for in the vision of Governments, beginning with the 1956-1961 Administration of Dr. Eric Williams, late Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, which introduced free secondary education; in committed technocrats and a though still small yet growing band of teachers, students and parents determined to see their charges and TT move forward. Today, there is a sense of urgency, what with the Third World crippling onward march of globalisation. Only a relative few days ago, Minister of Education, Senator Hazel Manning, announced that Government would be constructing ten pre-schools before the end of the year, and 50 each year for the next several years. 

Mrs. Manning and the Education Ministry, which she heads, recognise the need for Trinidad and Tobago to seek to catch up with the industrial nations of the world, and that one of the factors in achieving this will be via the process of introducing the country’s children to an advanced educational process, and getting them involved and interested in learning at an earlier age than their parents. At that stage it will be a fun thing, building blocks, discovering the names of birds and plants and recognising examples of the various flora and fauna and how to write, read and spell and get along with other children their own age. The approach to upgrading the efficiency of student/citizens is on several fronts. It includes teacher training programmes, setting First World standards for the teaching profession, like the not altogether new insistence on primary school teachers obtaining University degrees in order to qualify for appointments to top rank positions; the design and construction and/or expansion of schools in which learning becomes increasingly appealing.

It includes the placing of expanding emphasis on vocational education, and taking education to the people as, for example,  the construction of the vocational skills centre at the old Rum Bond on the Eastern Main Road, Laventille.  It includes the hundreds of millions of dollars that the Government has committed itself to spending on the expansion of facilities at the St. Augustine Campus of the University of the West Indies and the creation of the new University of Trinidad and Tobago. In the process more scores of students will join the 37 at the mountaintop. It is interesting that the monumental success of the students in this year’s Cambridge A Level and AS Level examinations have taken place as the Ministry of Education is about to move from these examinations, as official University entry requirements, to the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE).  CAPE, which will have such subjects as Caribbean Studies, Home Economics, Management and Business Studies, among others, will replace the Cambridge Examinations from next  year.

The country leaves the Cambridge yardstick with a flourish.  Three TT students placed first in the 2004 A Level Examinations - Dennis Ramdass, of Naparima College, in Physics; Maria Abdool, of Holy Faith Convent, in Business Studies, and Anushka Ramjag, of SAGHS, in Geography - and two in the Advanced Subsidiary Examinations - Kendall Richardson, of Carapichaima Senior Comprehensive, and Siemone Fortune, of Pleasantville Senior Comprehensive [jointly] in General Paper. But irony of ironies, four of the students - girls - were among the top ten in English Literature doing far better at an analytical approach to the works of the English playwright, William Shakespeare (Othello and Macbeth); the American writer, Tennessee Williams (The Glass Menagerie); Japanese author, Kazuo Ishiguro (An Artist in the Floating World), and English writer, Jane Austen (Emma) than many an English, American or Japanese student.

Three of the girls, who did ever so much better than scores of English, American and Japanese students, among others, in English Literature - Candice Davis, who came third; Zindsziswe Morris-Alleyne and Damali Nicholls, who tied for fifth place, were students of Bishop Anstey High School, and a fourth, Anamika Madoo, came from St. George’s College. I switch gears. Retired Bishop Anstey High School French teacher, Miss Dianne Nicholls, who has campaigned for Cambridge University to revisit its Ungraded marking for seven Bishop Anstey students in the Literature component of the French Examination, placarded Monday’s Cambridge World Achievers Award Ceremony 2004 held at the Hilton Trinidad.

She has rejected the Cambridge Ungraded mark and her argument that persons, one of whom placed second in the world in Spanish Literature — Fatima Siwaju — and two who placed fifth in English Literature — Candice Davis and Damali Nicholls — hardly likely to receive an ungraded mark in French Literature is a valid one.  Clearly, how can students excel in Spanish and English Literature respectively, subjects which would demand a no less analytical approach than that of French Literature, yet be marked ungraded? Someone has advanced the unamusingly absurd theory that the girls perhaps absented themselves from the examination. Miss Nicholls is insisting that Cambridge University review the papers and has pointed out that in two of the cases the ungraded mark, unless  there is a second look, may mean the difference between  their securing an Open Scholarship and an Additional Scholarship, while the third may receive a better placing in French.  Cambridge University should revisit the issue.