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Don't just limit student athletes to grades, rate their efforts too
Published: Friday | February 10, 2012
By Orville Higgins
In the last two weeks or so, one particular issue has occupied hours of talk time on the radio call-in programme that I host during the week on KLAS.
The Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) has ruled that in order for a student to represent his (or her) school in ISSA competitions, that student should be averaging at least 45 per cent in at least four subjects in the term before the competition. ISSA also insists on an attendance record of at least 80 per cent. Those rules were conceptualised with good reasons.
Prior to these rules, many students (if they could be called that) were known to attend some schools only during the season of their respective sport. Attending class was never compulsory.
Passing exams was never insisted on. These students were stars on the football or cricket field, or legends on the track, but 'would eat their name on a bulla'. Coaches would scout around and pick up these students because of the value they brought to schools' sports programmes. Very often, the academic well-being of the student was neglected.
There was nothing then that prevented a student from attending five different high schools in five years and still leaving illiterate! ISSA had to do something, and the rules created were reasonable to try to address this problem.
The time has come, though, for these rules to be revised.
In 1999, the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) replaced the Common Entrance Examination as the placement conveyor belt from primary/prep school to high school.
Any close analysis of the GSAT results since that time will reveal that a large percentage of students who have sat these exams not only fail to achieve mastery of the subject areas, but quite often fail to perform at even the most basic standard.
The results for last year, for example, showed that 22 per cent of the students that sat the numeracy component performed quite dismally. In recent times, there have been cases where as high as 20 per cent of students have averaged less than 33 per cent in the language arts component, many of them showing a serious inability to read and write acceptably.
Despite this, these students, with serious learning deficiencies, will enter high school, albeit not the more traditional ones. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to determine that a lot of those who enter high schools are, therefore, ill-equipped to tackle that curriculum. Asking these same students to average 45 per cent or more in four subjects in high schools may be a pie-in-the-sky wish.
Appalling levels of literacy
The point is that two decades ago, when Common Entrance was used to place students in high schools, students were more likely to attain higher levels of literacy. Common Entrance, unlike GSAT, which is almost completely multiple choice, asked students to write essays, which meant that students entering high school would perhaps be more competent in reading and writing.
Under GSAT, it's not necessarily so. Development psychologists all know that the key to a child's ability to function in formal schools is the ability to read and communicate. The child who struggles with reading will struggle in high school, and there are kids sitting GSAT who struggle with reading. It's that simple.
ISSA has to ask, what do we do with the child who is showing genuine effort, who 'passes' GSAT, but is struggling to maintain the 45 per cent benchmark in four subjects, primarily because of his deficiencies in reading? Why should that child be deprived of his right to represent his school?
The 45 per cent rule was designed to stop able-minded students from 'forming the fool' in high school. We understand that, but it's now also affecting the youth who legitimately earns his spot in the high-school system but is struggling, despite giving his best efforts. That seems to be patently unfair.
Teachers' comments on report cards should also carry weight, besides the actual scores, for greater flexibility in deciding who makes the cut for sports.
We are still having a system where the good are suffering for the bad. The so-called bright child should have no greater right than the slow ones to represent his school in sports.
My take is that the youngster must be allowed to participate for his school in any activity of his choice, once he is showing that he is genuinely trying to cope. Otherwise, we may be marginalising the child for being a victim of stystemic failures of the education sector.
Orville Higgins is the 2011 winner of the Hugh Crosskill/Raymond Sharpe Award for Sports Reporting. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/2...cleisure3.html
Published: Friday | February 10, 2012
By Orville Higgins
In the last two weeks or so, one particular issue has occupied hours of talk time on the radio call-in programme that I host during the week on KLAS.
The Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) has ruled that in order for a student to represent his (or her) school in ISSA competitions, that student should be averaging at least 45 per cent in at least four subjects in the term before the competition. ISSA also insists on an attendance record of at least 80 per cent. Those rules were conceptualised with good reasons.
Prior to these rules, many students (if they could be called that) were known to attend some schools only during the season of their respective sport. Attending class was never compulsory.
Passing exams was never insisted on. These students were stars on the football or cricket field, or legends on the track, but 'would eat their name on a bulla'. Coaches would scout around and pick up these students because of the value they brought to schools' sports programmes. Very often, the academic well-being of the student was neglected.
There was nothing then that prevented a student from attending five different high schools in five years and still leaving illiterate! ISSA had to do something, and the rules created were reasonable to try to address this problem.
The time has come, though, for these rules to be revised.
In 1999, the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) replaced the Common Entrance Examination as the placement conveyor belt from primary/prep school to high school.
Any close analysis of the GSAT results since that time will reveal that a large percentage of students who have sat these exams not only fail to achieve mastery of the subject areas, but quite often fail to perform at even the most basic standard.
The results for last year, for example, showed that 22 per cent of the students that sat the numeracy component performed quite dismally. In recent times, there have been cases where as high as 20 per cent of students have averaged less than 33 per cent in the language arts component, many of them showing a serious inability to read and write acceptably.
Despite this, these students, with serious learning deficiencies, will enter high school, albeit not the more traditional ones. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to determine that a lot of those who enter high schools are, therefore, ill-equipped to tackle that curriculum. Asking these same students to average 45 per cent or more in four subjects in high schools may be a pie-in-the-sky wish.
Appalling levels of literacy
The point is that two decades ago, when Common Entrance was used to place students in high schools, students were more likely to attain higher levels of literacy. Common Entrance, unlike GSAT, which is almost completely multiple choice, asked students to write essays, which meant that students entering high school would perhaps be more competent in reading and writing.
Under GSAT, it's not necessarily so. Development psychologists all know that the key to a child's ability to function in formal schools is the ability to read and communicate. The child who struggles with reading will struggle in high school, and there are kids sitting GSAT who struggle with reading. It's that simple.
ISSA has to ask, what do we do with the child who is showing genuine effort, who 'passes' GSAT, but is struggling to maintain the 45 per cent benchmark in four subjects, primarily because of his deficiencies in reading? Why should that child be deprived of his right to represent his school?
The 45 per cent rule was designed to stop able-minded students from 'forming the fool' in high school. We understand that, but it's now also affecting the youth who legitimately earns his spot in the high-school system but is struggling, despite giving his best efforts. That seems to be patently unfair.
Teachers' comments on report cards should also carry weight, besides the actual scores, for greater flexibility in deciding who makes the cut for sports.
We are still having a system where the good are suffering for the bad. The so-called bright child should have no greater right than the slow ones to represent his school in sports.
My take is that the youngster must be allowed to participate for his school in any activity of his choice, once he is showing that he is genuinely trying to cope. Otherwise, we may be marginalising the child for being a victim of stystemic failures of the education sector.
Orville Higgins is the 2011 winner of the Hugh Crosskill/Raymond Sharpe Award for Sports Reporting. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/2...cleisure3.html
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