The national grade average as reflected in the results of this year’s Bahamas General Certificate of Secondary Education (BGCSE) examinations is a D+, up from a D last year, Ministry of Education officials reported on Wednesday.
The first time the grade average reached this mark was back in 2000.
According to Lionel Sands, assistant director at the Testing and Evaluation Centre, over 720 of the 5,762 students who sat the exams passed five or more subjects with a “C” or above grade, a pre-requisite for entry into the College of The Bahamas.
Of the 25 subjects offered in 2005, 10 recorded an improvement in student performance in comparison to last year.
They included Bookkeeping and Accounts, Carpentry and Joinery, Chemistry, Clothing Construction, Economics, English Language, French, Literature, Music, Spanish and Typewriting.
Again this year, the school recording the greatest percentage of students obtaining five or more subjects with “C” or higher is St. Augustine’s College, with 112 or 71.3 percent of the 157 students making this achievement.
Schools with the average grade higher than a “D+” were Aquinas College, C-; Bahamas Academy, C-; Kingsway Academy, C; Nassau Christian Academy, C; Prince William High, C-; Queen’s College, C; St. Andrew’s School, C+; St. Anne’s High, C-; St. John’s College, C; Temple Christian, C-; Faith Temple School, C-; Forest Heights Academy, C; Lucaya International, C; N.G.M. Major, C+ and North Long Island High, C.
Schools operating on the national mean grade were C. R. Walker Senior High, D+; C. C. Sweeting Senior High, D+; North Andros High, D+; Preston Albury High D+; Central Eleuthera High, D+; Spanish Wells All Age, D+; C. W. Saunders High, D+; Windermere High, D+; Grand Bahama Catholic High, D+; and Sunland Baptist, D+.
Officials have attributed this year’s “improvement” to several factors, including a programme initiated by the Ministry of Education several years ago.
In 1998, the Ministry launched professional development activities for teachers at the school, district and national levels. The Ministry also further improved the monitoring of the instructional programme by school administrators and curriculum offices.
At the primary level, the focus has been on smaller classes, the implementation of Spanish and the expansion of specialist subjects, education officials said.
“Based on a conversation with the Director (of Education) last week, the Ministry has put in place a requirement that Math teachers attend compulsory workshops in the content areas to improve their delivery in the classrooms and ultimately the performance of students,” Mr. Sands explained.
Mr. Sands noted that fewer students are achieving E, F, G and U grades.
The assistant director further noted that while it would be a wonderful thing to report a national grade average of C, realistically there will always be a situation where not all students achieve the very top grades “no matter what is done” based on a number of mitigating factors.
“One must take into consideration the communities and homes some children come from, situations the school really has no control over,” he said.
“There are issues that are not encouraging to students, but very real. There are kids who see drug dealers who did not go to school doing well, and kids who may not have the basics needed to support their schoolwork.”
But many observers say the fact that the national average is a D+ is still cause for serious concern.
On Wednesday, education officials also reported that the average grade from the Bahamas Junior Certificate (BJC) examinations, taken mainly by 9th graders, also remained a D, a pattern unchanged over the past six years.
Of the 10 subjects offered to the more than 7,000 candidates, only Religious Studies showed an overall improvement in comparison to 2004.
Health Science was the only subject that showed an overall decline in performance.
“Some may attribute the improvement in Religious Studies to the fact that many of our students attend Sunday schools and churches,” Mr. Sands said.
“In addition to that, when you look at the structure of the religious exam, it is not necessarily teaching things that happen in the Bible, but also real life situations within the community. Health Science meantime is a content-based subject.”
The subjects in which the lowest performance was seen were Mathematics and General Science with averages of E+ and E respectively.
By: Macushla N. Pinder, The Bahama Journal
