More concerns are being brought to the forefront surrounding the management of the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Information (MOEYI) and handling of the CXC examination process. The start date for the exam now changed from July 27 to July 13 and the Minister with responsibility for Education claiming that the decision to move up the date was a collaborative effort – one that did not involve students.
“We cannot lead – you could never imagine us arriving at a conclusion as to when to engage students in an examination by being guided by hundreds-and I suspect if you take it to its full extreme – over a hundred thousand students. It has to be lead by those who teach and plan, and the experience of others both internationally and locally,” said Karl Samuda, Minister without Portfolio with responsibility for Education, Youth, and Information.
A statement that has been met with disapproval from the National Secondary Students’ Council (NSSC) which believes that administering the examinations in July will come with risks.
“The students feel misled. They don’t understand how it is that it moved from Jamaica not participating to July 27 to now July 13. They can’t fathom that because now they have less time and time was a major factor, to begin with,” says NSSC’s Public Relations Officer Ree-Anna Robinson. “Students were beginning to warm up to this date and it has definitely caused increased anxiety with this change of date.”
Robinson believes that there needs to be a bigger conversation about the issues affecting students as youth are not objects of intervention but a part of the solution.
“Students need to be actively involved at every level and the National Youth Policy speaks to this, youth mainstreaming a greater sense of intentionality when regarding the voice of youth so that we are not brought to the table just some time but all the time as equal as other stakeholders,” she says.
There are approximately 76 thousand students scheduled to sit the Caribbean Secondary Certificate and Caribbean Advanced Proficiency exams in Jamaica, this year.
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