UNIVERSAL SECONDARY EDUCATION

...One Year Later

The results of the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) 2001 are out and tears of joy and sorrow have been shed. The Ministry of Education has stated that all students have been placed in “Secondary” Schools.

TTUTA has continued to stress the need for Quality Secondary Education, which in our view involves:

• Having well planned, carefully developed systems with realistic time frames;
• Provision of a wide range of subjects and activities to cater for the many skills, talents and interests of students;
• The provision of suitably qualified, well trained and well paid teachers, administrators and support staff;
• Properly constructed, safe, secure and well-maintained schools;
• A wide range of facilities, such as libraries, laboratories, workshops, music and art rooms and suitable equipment to aid student learning;
• Small, manageable classes that cater for individual needs;
• Increased and adequate funding to ensure that all education goals are met.

  During the first year of USE, the Association was extremely vigilant in monitoring developments in the secondary schools. Our investigations have not yielded a pretty picture.

  Some Findings of TTUTA’s Investigations:
  
  

• No specialised training has been offered to teachers in the system to help them deal with the special needs of students in the Forms One Special;
• No proper programme or curriculum has been developed or put in place, especially in the critical subject areas of remedial reading and mathematics for the Forms One Special;
• Critical support structures, for example, remedial teachers are absent;
• Members of the Diagnostic Prescriptive Services team responsible for testing the students and making recommendations re their instruction have not been paid for some time and are uncertain as to their tenure;
• In some schools seventeen year olds are placed in the Form One classes together with eleven and twelve year olds, a situation which is untenable;
• Some of the private secondary schools are in unsuitable, dilapidated buildings, with inadequate facilities and equipment, untrained and not suitably qualified teachers, questionable health and safety standards and provide little or no co and extra curricular activities;
• The Blanchisseuse High School is still incomplete and uncertain to be ready by September. In the meantime students languish in a cramped, ill-equipped community centre;
• The Biche High School remains unopened due to the presence of poisonous gases. Alternative arrangements for housing the students are unsatisfactory.
• The school construction programme involving the building of some ten new secondary schools has virtually ground to a halt;
• The Ibis High School has no formal programme, a shortage of suitable teachers, large classes, little or no appropriate resources and health and safety hazards due to poor ventilation and building design;
• Technical Vocational subjects are omitted from the SEMP curriculum, when such subjects should be included there to cater for diverse learning styles;
• In the Forms One Special, SEMP schools and Secondary Centres, the lack of appropriate teaching and learning aids means that students are exposed mainly to academic subjects, while their needs may demand otherwise.
• The necessary systems must be put in place to minimize negative fall out.

  Secondary Education is not simply finding a space in a building for every child. Any hastily and poorly planned education change can lead to the destruction of our children.