PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Con­sid­er­a­tion should be giv­en to a con­tin­u­ous as­sess­ment pro­gramme that al­lows for Sec­ondary school place­ment.

Rev Bish­op Claude Berkley has put for­ward this sug­ges­tion amid the con­tin­u­ous con­cern that the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment may not be the ide­al method for stu­dents to move from pri­ma­ry to sec­ondary school.

"Well I think it is re­al­ly too stress­ful on the chil­dren, on the teach­ers, and maybe more so on the par­ents. I pray that we can get a sys­tem that is a con­tin­u­ous as­sess­ment sys­tem that will work, that it can with­stand scruti­ny.

"Even if I'm say­ing that I'm a lit­tle hes­i­tant to say that, even if it's what my mind would like to see hap­pen, be­cause we have a way of dis­tort­ing nor­mal and good process­es for per­son­nel and oth­er out­comes.

"But I think the sys­tem should be re­vamped, and a sys­tem of con­tin­u­ous ed­u­ca­tion might be more ap­pro­pri­ate to the task," said Rev Berkley dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia out­side the Cheryl Greaves Au­di­to­ri­um at Bish­ops Anstey and Trin­i­ty Col­lege East cam­pus in Trinci­ty yes­ter­day.

He was part of the Bish­op Anstey As­so­ci­a­tion's ed­u­ca­tion con­sul­ta­tion at the au­di­to­ri­um.

The event, which op­er­at­ed un­der the theme, "Prepar­ing our schools to face the glob­al chal­lenges of ed­u­ca­tion" saw the BAA dis­cuss their plans for eight An­gli­can schools un­der its purview. It was the first time the con­sul­ta­tion was held since 2018.

The schools un­der the BAA board are Bish­op Anstey Ju­nior School, Trin­i­ty Ju­nior School, Fyz­abad An­gli­can Sec­ondary School, Bish­op's High School, To­ba­go, Bish­op Anstey High School, Port-of-Spain, St Stephen's Col­lege, Bish­op's Cen­te­nary Col­lege, Bish­op Anstey High School East, and Trin­i­ty Col­lege East.

Rev Berkley said he was pleased by the progress made by stu­dents since the re­sump­tion of in-per­son class­es, as he felt the dis­rup­tions caused by COVID were slow­ly be­ing ad­dressed.

"I am a for­mer teacher and I know the dif­fer­ence in terms of ad­min­is­ter­ing the ed­u­ca­tion­al prin­ci­ples and ob­jec­tives of per­son­al touch as op­posed to vir­tu­al. So the schools have gen­er­al­ly re­port­ed that stu­dents have fall­en back in­to gear. There are some laps­es be­cause of the gaps of the pe­ri­od, the COVID pe­ri­od. And the schools have or­gan­ised sort of re­me­di­al and sup­port mech­a­nisms to as­sist those stu­dents who are re­al­ly floun­der­ing. So I think it is gen­er­al­ly favourable," said Rev Berkley.

He, how­ev­er, not­ed the COVID dis­rup­tions al­so led to break­downs in com­mu­ni­ca­tion which like­ly con­tributed to is­sues like the Trin­i­ty hair­style con­tro­ver­sy es­ca­lat­ing in a man­ner that it should not have. While Trin­i­ty Col­lege does not of­fi­cial­ly fall un­der the BAA, it does still have an af­fil­i­a­tion with the as­so­ci­a­tion and in­deed of­fered a pre­sen­ta­tion at yes­ter­day's event.

Berkley said the hair­style is­sue typ­i­cal­ly would have been dis­cussed be­tween the stu­dent body and the school board had prop­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels been fol­lowed.

"Per­haps the ground­work, the usu­al ground­work was not done, be­cause you may have come in out of COVID. So some­thing hap­pened which was not of the usu­al and there­fore the es­ca­la­tion to what hap­pened with that mat­ter ... But the ques­tion is there is no hard and fast, there is a com­mu­nal kind of process for ad­just­ing ac­cord­ing­ly," said Rev Berkley.

De­spite the con­sul­ta­tion, Berkley con­firmed the BAA was still guid­ed by the poli­cies of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.