The Bahamas will be unable to compete in the global economy if it believes ‘D+’ is an acceptable passing grade for the BGCSE, warning that this nation could lose increasing numbers of jobs to outsourcing.
In its latest newsletter, the Fidelity Group of Companies said Bahamians had to stop thinking that their Bahamian nationality was enough in itself to secure them a job, as outsourcing and offshoring meant there were thousands of English-speaking persons who could take their jobs without needing to obtain a work permit.
Fidelity said: “We hope that the Government takes a long and hard look at our deteriorating social infrastructure. Our schools are in a dire state, and our ability to compete with three billion new workers who have entered the global job market, thanks to the Internet, is non-existent.
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Fidelity described a “substantial portion” of the Bahamian economy as being vulnerable to outsourcing trends, especially given the relatively high operating costs in this nation.
“We need to equip our children to compete on a global platform,” Fidelity said.
“We cannot compete if we believe that a D+ is a passing grade for the BGCSE. We cannot compete if parents are not engaged, teachers are poorly paid and physical infrastructure is in shambles. We cannot compete if the cost per unit of production is high.
“These are conversations we must have. The Government needs to engage Bahamians in discussing this issue and draw up a blueprint on how the Bahamas will compete in the new cyber age, where sovereign borders will be amorphous and where low cost and high productivity will be the key to sustainable competitive advantage.”
In a hard-hitting report released last year, the Coalition for Education Reform, a bi-partisan body featuring employer groups and trade unions, revealed that students from public high schools in New Providence who sat BGCSE exams in summer 2004 achieved an average grade of ‘F+’.
It described this as a “truly disturbing” performance. The statistic was taken from a confidential report prepared by the Ministry of Education’s Testing and Evaluation Unit, which also found that the ‘Mean Grade’ achieved by students from New Providence private high schools in the 2004 BGCSE exams was just ‘D+’.
Describing both mean grades and the gap between them as “truly disturbing”, the report, titled Bahamian Youth: The Untapped Resource, drew on the Ministry of Education document, which said: “Were it not for the private schools and a few public high schools in the family Islands, the mean grade
for the country would have been an astounding E [rather than D]: This [level of academic achievement] is totally unacceptable.”
The Ministry of Education report showed that, out of 4,367 students who sat the Maths BGCSE in summer 2004, just 141 or three per cent achieved an ‘A’ grade, with some 14 per cent or 614 getting a ‘U’ or failed grade. The average or mean grade for maths was an ‘E’.
The results for English were slightly better, with a mean or average grade of ‘D-‘, but again, only three per cent or 130 out of the 4,281 who took the exam achieved an ‘A’ grade.
The Coalition said the current level of academic achievement could make the Bahamas one of the Western Hemisphere’s least competitive economies in 20 years’ time, with Bahamians in danger of becoming marginalised and reduce to “second class citizens” in their own nation.
In an address to the Rotary Club of East Nassau last month, Dennis MacKinnon, outgoing headmaster at St Andrew’s School, said the private sector could help bring about positive education reform by encouraging good governance and “outStanding teaching” in Bahamian schools that were free from political interference.
Mr McKinnon said: “As long as the private sector in this country does not question the notion’ that the BGCSE is a suitable end-of-school qualification for the youth of this country – even the brightest academically – and as long as it does not insist on a programme of world class quality, such as the IB diploma programme, being available for all Bahamian children, and not simply the richest or those fortunate enough to earn a scholarship to a school such as St Andrew’s, then the system will never change and the future will be bleak indeed.
“You will have `more of the same’, and it is not going to work in the world of the 21st century. You do not need long conferences, endless committees, paper after paper after paper. We simply need the principles of good school governance, administration and teaching to take place in our schools … immediately.”
Mr MacKinnon said Alfred Sears, the minister of education, had told him that the Government was looking at how it could best offer IB-type educationat some government schools as a result of a visit he made to St Andrew’s school.
By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor
