GSAT placement

THE GRADE Six Achievement Test, which has replaced the Common Entrance Examination, has just gone through its third run. The Gleaner has carried dozens of advertisements from schools in which students have been placed for them to come in. What is not clear is how those students have been allocated to schools.

The GSAT is part of Government's commitment to greater access, equity and quality in the school system. As an examination which tests students' performance across the primary curriculum in their final year, the GSAT is a big improvement over the CEE. But it retains, with much less clarity, the placement functions of the CEE for secondary school places in a system of quite variable quality.

One disgruntled parent has written an open letter to the Minister of Education which The Gleaner carried last Wednesday to say, "I am totally perplexed as to how children who sat the GSAT are placed in high schools and the newly upgraded high schools".

Despite the Minister's assurances about upgrading school quality, parents have their own reasonable perceptions on quality and on how spaces of varying quality are allocated. Three placement criteria have been given by the Ministry of Education: choice, performance, and location with respect to the school. How these disparate factors are mixed and weighted are yet to be explained.

To complicate matters, a story carried by The Sunday Gleaner reported Edwin Thomas, the Information Officer of the Ministry of Education, stating that only children scoring 90 per cent and better were considered for placement at Ardenne, the most popular first choice. Where is the home location factor? And where are low scorers assigned?

The Ministry has offered no resolution to the dilemma that top performers have reasonable expectations of being placed in top schools like those identified by Mr. Thomas, but schools of lower quality cannot hope to improve without being assigned some of the better performers. The thorny issue of placement should be publicly resolved and clarified before the next sitting of the GSAT. It should not remain shrouded in mystery and secrecy.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner.

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