'Abolish GSAT' - Cornwall College principal

[Islandman]

'Abolish GSAT' - ‘Place best teachers in primary and infant schools’

Cornwall College principal says exam not best way of placing students in secondary schools

BY COREY ROBINSON Observer staff reporter robinsonc@jamaicaobserver.com

Monday, April 23, 2012


THE principal of Cornwall College, one of the oldest high schools in Jamaica, believes the Government should abolish the hated Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) and find a more efficient way of placing students into secondary schools.

Denham McIntyre's call — made at the Cornwall College Old Boys' Association annual Gala Dinner and Awards Banquet, held at the University of the West Indies Mona Visitors' Lodge on Saturday — adds to growing discontent over the exam, which is used to move students from the primary to the secondary education level.

"Government should abolish the GSAT programme and find better ways of placing students in secondary schools... It does not make sense for us to just take up everybody, put them in the same schools — achieving and non-achieving — and say that they are in high schools," McIntyre said.


Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/...#ixzz1srZVvXtv

[Islandman]

While his cause for concern about the problems in early education is valid I do not think his solution is well thought out, or at least not very well articulated.

When he says "put the best teachers in primary schools" does he mean take them from the secondary schools? Who then teaches at the secondary schools since many of the primary school teachers do not even have CXC subjects?

Also, his call to go back to designation of high, comprehensive and secondary schools worries me. That solves nothing and in my view was a worse system than exists today.


GSAT is an assessment/selection program used to manage a bigger problem. It is not the actual problem, which is finding a way to provide adequate resources to educate our young people.

[Don1]

Since I'm unqualified to make suggestions about GSAT by virtue of being ignorant of the details... I don't.

Nuff peeple ave "opinions" ... and the desire to propagate these ideas through media

Few have workable, researched, data driven, peer evaluated & market tested "solutions" ... i.e. the scientific method we all learn the theory about in school

Mout jus mek fi chat

[Exile]

"....workable, researched, data driven, peer evaluated & market tested "solutions". Will have to use that today. Thanks.

[Don1]

LOL

[OJ]

Well look at it a different way... if at 12 you had to write a test that decided your future in the U.S or Canada I think most would cry foul. You had a bad two days and you are scarred or you are taught to pass the test and you are good. Abolish it... it is not a good indicator and if the principal of an esteemed institution is of the opinion i tend to agree.

[Islandman]

OJ, abolish it and replace it with WHAT? That is what I am not hearing yet. Will it still be an assessment based system or not? That is the fundamental question.

Or we can replace it with a system of sending children to the nearest public school to where you live. I wonder how middle class Kingstonians would prefer that to GSAT. Quite frankly they would not accept it.

Is the problem GSAT or is the problem the small number of decent schools?

[Islandman]

One other thought on this. I don't know how it works elsewhere but where I am in FL since the decision on where you go to public school is based on where you live, people who can afford it move to the areas that have the best public schools (or send the children to private schools) and poor people who cannot afford it live in areas with the worst public schools.

Assessment-based system? No but hardly a meritocracy either.

[Assasin]

When it was common entrance them wanted something else, when a GSAT, it seems like common entrace was better or they want something else.

The fact is we have to work with the system and make the schools better. What is wrong if kids have to study hard, what is the alternative? How many school we have so that everybody can choose and refuse?

We have to have some measuring tool and GSAT is just that.

[Islandman]

The main problem I have with GSAT specifically is that it is a LOT more work than Common Entrance was, too much for that age in my view. But it is a better assessment without a doubt. Still kinda unfair because parents who can afford it send thier children to GSAT preparation classes for months.

Me nuh know how if you can get away from that fully though, you could say the same about SAT or any other assessment test.

[Assasin]

Well one of the thing I am proud of is after graduating high school and not getting a job right away, I volinteered extra lessions at my old all age school for common entrance. Even today I pass through kids still call me teacher and say thanks -

We need more of that for the ones who can't pay for those classes.

[OJ]

nothing Gsat and cme was at a time when we have 10 schools and 1000 students and was a way of filtering. Now we need standards base test in english and math not to see how individual students are doing but how schools and areas are doing and then apply good teachers and methods to those under performing areas.

[OJ]

yes are the students better educated or are they drilled to pass the exam...

[Islandman]

Thats fine but realistically until enough of the schools improve to some basic standard of education we will have GSAT or some other assessment test. It will not happen before that.

Even then it will be a hard sell because we have a culture of selecting the school our children go to, but that should be the long term goal I agree.

And to be fair to the govts past and present, there does appear to be some effort to start grading school performance that we did not have before.

[Jawge]

Good question. Many want the system to be in place so that they can feel sorry for the less fortunate and exercise the god complex.