Bridgetown.
Poor performance by some students at the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) level is not all their fault.
This is the view of Register of CXC Dr Didacus Jules, who thinks there is a need for a revolution in education across the region.
" The problem of performance in Caribbean education is not simply a narrative of individuals failure but is also an expression of systemic meltdown. Put simply, that learners are failing in significant numbers is an expression of the fact that our education systems are fundamentally flawed and despite comparatively higher ratios of Caribbean investment in education than some Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, we are failing to deliver efficiently and effectively", Jules said.
The register drew reference to the performance of candidates in the CXC exams over the past four years, noting that an average of 28 percent of candidates did not receive acceptable grades (1-3) with that statistic rising to 33.4 percent last year.
Additionally, only 21.3 percent of the cohort recived Grades 1-3 in five or more subjects.He highlighted the 56 percent of the 2012 cohort who obtained acceptable grades in only one or no subjects whom he described as the casualties of a system in which failure is structural.
"The unknown and unrecorded numbers who enter secondary school but will leave without even an opportunity to sit a terminal exam are the silent shadows that will return to haunt you in the street corners, or attack you in your home. They are available recruits for the desperate and the dispossessed who our system has condemned', he warned.
Jules was delivering a lecture on The Challenges Of Education in the Contemporary Caribbean at the Grande Salle of the Barbados Central Bank.
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