Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly says the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil’s (CXC) an­nounce­ment that it would re­verse the de­ci­sion to dis­con­tin­ue some tech­ni­cal vo­ca­tion­al sub­jects is the best out­come at this time.

Her po­si­tion on the mat­ter came af­ter CXC met with min­is­ters of ed­u­ca­tion from across the re­gion yes­ter­day af­ter last month’s de­ci­sion to dis­con­tin­ue Agri­cul­tur­al Sci­ence (dou­ble award), Me­chan­i­cal En­gi­neer­ing, Elec­tri­cal and Elec­tron­ic En­gi­neer­ing Tech­nol­o­gy and Green En­gi­neer­ing.

CXC said that those sub­jects were cho­sen be­cause of low en­rol­ment by stu­dents.

Ac­cord­ing to deputy CEO Dr Ed­uar­do Ali, since 2017, the to­tal num­ber of stu­dents en­rolled in the Elec­tri­cal and Elec­tron­ic Tech­nol­o­gy CSEC cur­ricu­lum was 4,500 across the en­tire re­gion. For build­ing and fab­ri­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy it was 4,200 and for me­chan­i­cal en­gi­neer­ing, the num­bers were be­low 2,400.

“For that par­tic­u­lar sub­ject, we have six ter­ri­to­ries in the last five years that have no stu­dents reg­is­tered at all across the re­gion, three ter­ri­to­ries had be­tween one to five stu­dents reg­is­tered an­nu­al­ly and a fur­ther three ter­ri­to­ries on­ly had a reg­is­tra­tion up­take up­wards of 50 stu­dents,” he said. But crit­i­cisms from ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers across the Caribbean pushed the coun­cil to con­sult. In a state­ment post­ed to its Face­book page on May 29, CXC ac­knowl­edged the con­cern ex­pressed by stake­hold­ers due to the pre­ma­ture re­lease of cor­re­spon­dence ad­dressed to the min­istries of ed­u­ca­tion con­cern­ing the syl­labus sus­pen­sion.

“This sit­u­a­tion is re­gret­table and un­der­stand­ably would have caused anx­i­ety among our key stake­hold­er groups,” it read.

Yes­ter­day, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) Dr Wayne Wes­ley al­so an­nounced that CXC had rolled out new gen­er­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy and sci­ence pro­grammes but some did not gen­er­ate the de­sired de­mand and gov­ern­ments would part­ner with CXC to build in­ter­est in them to en­able their cost vi­a­bil­i­ty.

Wes­ley said oth­er con­cerns were the avail­abil­i­ty of teach­ers, labs, and oth­er equip­ment need­ed to fa­cil­i­tate the de­liv­ery of the pro­grammes ef­fi­cient­ly.

He added that yes­ter­day’s meet­ing with ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers re­in­forced the need for a col­lec­tive re­gion­al mar­ket­ing thrust to pro­mote the pri­or­i­ty sub­ject ar­eas in Sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, en­gi­neer­ing, and math­e­mat­ics (STEM) Ed­u­ca­tion and cli­mate-smart ed­u­ca­tion.

“Which are con­sid­ered crit­i­cal for the eco­nom­ic growth and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment of the re­gion,” he elab­o­rat­ed.

The 12 new gen­er­a­tion sub­jects in­clude agri­cul­tur­al sci­ence, en­tre­pre­neur­ship, per­form­ing arts, phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion and sport, tourism, an­i­ma­tion and game de­sign, lo­gis­tics and sup­ply chain op­er­a­tions, dig­i­tal me­dia, fi­nan­cial ser­vices, de­sign and tech­nol­o­gy, and biotech­nol­o­gy.

Af­ter CXC an­nounced the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of the tech­ni­cal vo­ca­tion sub­jects, sev­er­al re­gion­al ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ters said they were not con­sult­ed be­fore the de­ci­sion.

An­tigua’s Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Daryll Matthew ex­pressed his dis­plea­sure with the coun­cil’s ap­proach. He said he was stunned by the press re­lease. Mean­while, St Lu­cia’s Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Shawn Ed­wards said he was tak­en aback by the de­ci­sion. Sim­i­lar views came from ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ters and stake­hold­ers from oth­er Caribbean is­lands.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly planned on con­sult­ing with stake­hold­ers be­fore T&T’s de­ci­sion on the mat­ter was made. Af­ter at­tend­ing the meet­ing, she said she, along with oth­er ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ters, agreed to do their part to pro­mote the un­der-sub­scribed sub­jects, as they sup­port­ed the de­vel­op­men­tal agen­das of the Caribbean na­tions.

“Al­so agreed up­on was a re­vised com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­e­gy be­tween MOEs and the CXC, which is bet­ter suit­ed to main­tain the col­lab­o­ra­tive na­ture of our in­ter­ac­tions,” she added.

Wes­ley said mov­ing for­ward, CXC was com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing its com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­to­cols af­ford the min­is­ters of ed­u­ca­tion a greater line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.