EDUCATOR DR. DENNIS Minott has rapped the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) for deficiencies he has identified in the curricula and grading system of the regional examination. The body ends a two-day meeting in Kingston today.
In an open letter this week to chairman of the council, Professor Kenneth Hall, Dr. Minott charged that a young Jamaican, with even a distinction (Grade 1) in the CSEC English Language exam, has too much difficulty with grammar, choice of words, sentence construction and punctuation.
He said that it was primarily from language teachers that students in the region garner "the maturity and analytical skills they must employ to put in and to extract meanings from the words they write, read, speak, and hear." Added Dr. Minott:
SHORT OF COMMUNICATION SKILLS
"I believe that the English (A) or language syllabus falls rather short in providing our fourth and fifth-formers with the adequacy in communication skills required in these times.
While commending aspects of the CSEC mathematics syllabus, Dr. Minott claimed there was "an unforgivable lapse" in the area of geometry. This, he argued, has dire implications for Jamaica's scientific and engineering developments. "I call upon CXC to revisit geometry in its syllabus design for CSEC mathematics," said Dr. Minott, who operates A-Quest, a private programme preparing students for admission to universities locally and abroad.
In his letter to the CXC council chairman, Dr. Minott also called for the harmonisation of the grading systems for the CAPE and CSEC levels in CXC examinations. In addition, he expressed reservations about CXC's plans to introduce an Associate Degree.
