‘NO MAJOR ISSUES’

THE writing of this year’s Barbados Secondary Schools’ Entrance Examination (BSSEE) occurred with no major issues at any of the exam centres.

Acting Chief Education Officer, Joy Adamson, reported this yesterday during a press conference at the conclusion of the BSSEE.

Speaking while at the St. Leonard’s Boys’ Secondary School, she said 3,401 students were registered to take the test. Those who did so were at “21 secondary schools” and at “an additional centre which was the Barbados Community College”. She said from reports reaching the Education Ministry up to that point in time, things went smoothly on the day.

“We didn’t have any reports of students falling ill or anybody being in any way disadvantaged from the centre. We had a few persons turn up and their names were not on the registration list, but we amended all of that and those children are not going to be disadvantaged. They were allowed to actually write the examination.”

She added there were 10 early sitters, 10 students who would have been home-schooled and 85 non-national students who wrote this year’s 11-Plus examination.

Adamson, in outlining what is next for the Education Ministry now the July 28th exam has concluded, said they will be checking all of their “registers, just making sure that all of the information is correct. Making sure that all of the Choice of School Forms and everything for the names that we have, that we do have copies of those and then we will start the session where there would be … standardisation for the exams and then we will be correcting the papers”.

Class 4s of Reynold Weekes Primary to sit exam on August 11

The Acting Chief Education Officer also said there will be a focus on the August 11th exam. She explained that the Class 4s of the Reynold Weekes Primary School were delayed from writing Wednesday’s Common Entrance Examination because of a positive COVID-19 case at the school.

She indicated those 58 pupils will be writing their BSSEE instead on August 11, the date for the alternative exam. Adamson further said that other Class 4s who would have been in quarantine or students who would have tested positive for COVID-19 and therefore were unavailable to write the July 28th BSSEE would also sit their test on this date.

She assured none of these students “will no way be disadvantaged”.

“I just want to make sure and allay any fears for some parents. I know yesterday [Tuesday] we had quite a few parents calling into some call-in programmes saying that they felt that the students might be disadvantaged because of the allocation process. They will not be disadvantaged. They will be in the same pool and the allocation will be done with all the others. So, we might have students who might have had an accident, who might be ill, they can also write the alternative paper as well. If they don’t make the 11th, we do have a further date that those persons will be able to write the exams so that they will be assigned to a secondary school.”

The 2021 BSSEE was originally slated for June 22, however, this date was changed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, along with the challenges faced by some students in relation to online schooling.