Stephen Vasciannie THE COMMON Entrance, which prevailed in Jamaica from the 1950s to the 1990s, encouraged a sharp and insensitive system of public assessment. It categorized 11-year-olds into groups of "pass" and "fail"; and in the earlier days up to the mid-1970s, it also propagated the notion of "half", though whether this indicated that you had "half-passed", or "half-failed" was never clearly specified. We have not yet properly ascertained the degree of social and psychological damage wrought upon generations of students by the misappropriation of language associated with the Common Entrance.
As the successor to the Common Entrance, the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) continues to be the main method by which our educational authorities determine the placement of students in the secondary school system. The GSAT is less given to overt oppression of students in their pre-teen years. Thus, students receive marks (usually out of 100), and on the basis of their overall performance in Mathematics, Language Arts, Social Studies, Science and Communications Tasks, each candidate is placed in secondary school.
STRESS, TENSION
Of course, it remains true that placement in secondary school is largely a function of performance in the GSAT, so this examination, like the Common Entrance, is associated with great stress and tension for youngsters -- not to mention parents and guardians. This is so not least because there remains a pecking order among secondary schools, most pronounced in urban areas perhaps, but also apparent in other communities where, historically, there has been a traditional high school with a grouping of former Junior Secondary Schools. Your level of performance in the GSAT, therefore, determines the degrees of freedom you have in the selection of secondary schools, and your choice of school will have a significant bearing on your later performance in the CXC Examination. So, the GSAT is important.
TOO HARD?
Is the GSAT too difficult for 11-year-olds, as some letter writers to The Gleaner have suggested? For the year 2003, the paper for Communications Tasks seemed reasonable to me. Writing Task 1 required candidates to complete a Personal Data Form which, notwithstanding its rather grand title, really just sought basic information about each candidate. If you are in an examination for 11-year-olds, and you cannot give your name, date of birth, the name of your parent or guardian, your home address and the name of your school, you may need to spend more time at that school.
Writing Task 2 carried the following instruction: "You had a dream that you do not want to forget. Relate the dream as it happened. Include the time, place, people and the things that were in the dream. Make your writing as interesting as possible." The last sentence of the question may be a little off-putting to the timid candidate, and those who have been having nightmares about the GSAT may not really want to write about their dreams, but, overall, a fair question for 11-year-old students. Only 50 minutes were offered, though, for Writing Tasks 1 and 2, leaving little time for reflection, say, on how to make the dream description as "interesting as possible".
At first glance, time constraints also seem significant in the case of the Mathematics paper. Students were asked to answer 80 questions in 75 minutes, though the paper I saw actually carried 78 questions. Students were also told "The use of calculator is not allowed in this test", a statement which prompted me to think about the grammar component of the Language Arts paper. In the Mathematics paper, though, the questions were precise, and fair: the range of questions allowed strong students to shine, and, at the same time, gave students of average mathematical inclination the chance to demonstrate their knowledge.
MATHS BRAINS
On my reading, at the easier end of the spectrum students were asked to subtract 531 from 927, to calculate 10x10x10, and to identify the number of items in a score. At the other end, they were called upon to undertake some geometrical calculations based on knowledge of angles formed by parallel lines (Questions 61 and 62) and to read a graph about monthly rainfall (Questions 75 to 77), matters which could have challenged some entrants. On balance, this was a good paper for 11-year-old students; certainly not too difficult: the kind of paper that, say, the class maths brains would have swept up comprehensively in 45 minutes, and most students should have been able to complete, a little breathlessly, in 75.
Incidentally, one mathematics question was either incorrectly structured, or designed to mislead. Question 63 carried four triangles, labelled A to D, and students were asked to identify the isosceles triangle among them. Two of the four options contained an indication that they were isosceles, but one of these had the mark for an equal side on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle.
This is an impossibility, so that option would have to be ruled out, leaving only one correct answer. But, should the student be expected to know that the right-angled triangle is deliberately marked in the wrong way, or should he or she assume the truth of the examiner's statement? This kind of problem should be avoided by question-setters.
Finally, the Language Arts and Social Studies papers for 2003 were more "interesting" than the Mathematics paper -- if I am allowed to borrow a subjective word from Communications Tasks. But for that discussion, you will have to rejoin me next week. In the meantime, consider whether it is more correct to link Louise Bennett to folklore than to link Rex Nettleford to music -- for you will need to get this right to take home the full hundred in Social Studies.
Stephen Vasciannie is Professor of International Law at the University of the West Indies.
