GSAT students face fewer high school choices
STUDENTS sitting the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) may soon have greater limits on their choice of high schools, according to Minister of Education and Youth Maxine Henry-Wilson.
This could be one of the recommendations of an investigation into last academic year’s GSAT, the results of which were published more than two weeks late, arising from a shortage of school spaces in St Catherine and Clarendon.
“We are looking at the number of choices students have. If you have five choices and you can choose (a school) anywhere, then it ends up with you always having problems with placing some of your students,” the minister said last Wednesday.
The change will not, however, take place this academic year since the deadline for selection by students sitting next year’s GSAT was last Friday.
Under the present system, students select five high schools, which they would most like to attend if successful in the GSAT. Students and their parents invariably choose traditional high schools with histories of outstanding academic performance.
The highest performers are given their first choice, which ensures that the better students are placed at these schools. Non-traditional schools with poor academic records are therefore left with those students who perform poorly – a fact that has, for years, been a bone of contention in Jamaica’s education system.
Henry-Wilson said, mean-while, that the preliminary findings of investigations into this year’s GSAT results had revealed “nothing untoward that had taken place”. But she said that she was awaiting the final report, which should help to ensure that their was no recurrence of the delay that was experienced.
At the same time, she said a census of students in grade six was currently underway to enable the ministry to plan for the right number of high school spaces across the island. The late publication of the results in July was the cause of anxiety among candidates and their parents, and triggered a swirl of rumours that there were irregularities in the exam.
Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, amidst the speculation, ordered the independent investigation now underway by team headed by Carlton Samuels, chief information officer of Mona Information Technology Services at the University of the West Indies, Mona. Also forming part of that team is retired Campion College principal Radley Reid, and attorney Milton Samuda.
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