Students get ready to enter the Girl Guides headquarters in St Andrew to participate in The Gleaner's Youthlink magazine CSEC technique seminar on Monday. - photos by Junior Dowie/Staff Photographer

Hundreds of students turned out on Monday and yesterday to participate in The Gleaner's Youthlink magazine seminars to help prepare them for regional examinations they will sit later this year.

Many of the participants said that they found the sessions extremely useful, but some educators lamented what they regarded as a culture shift in society that has led to many candidates no longer preparing in advance for their exams.

On Monday, several students admitted to The Gleaner that they were not prepared for the upcoming mathematics Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations, which are to take place in May.

Keisha Bloomfield, student of Clan Carthy High School, said that the seminar was very helpful but confessed that she was not familiar with many of the problems that were looked at during the presentation.

"To tell you the truth some of things that I see I don't know them," she said. "I haven't started learning some of those things as yet."

She said she was studying and expected that she would be 100 per cent ready in May.

Clement Radcliffe, principal of Glenmuir High School in Clarendon, and one of the presenters at Monday's seminar said, however, it was a sad situation as many grade 11 students were lacking in the fundamental principles of mathematics.

"The students appear to be in need of a lot of guidance," he said. "They are sadly lacking in the fundamental principles of mathematics and the appropriate approach they should use. Unfortunately, it seems to me that the students don't pay attention to what is being taught to them," added Radcliffe.

The principal said that just from his short interaction with the students at the seminar he noticed that some of the basic concepts for passing the exam were clearly missing.

Easy exams

"What is depressing about it is that the exams are easy. In the scheme of things, if they make a concerted effort to basically prepare themselves effectively and systematically over the period that is required, they would have no problem," he said.

Radcliffe added that one of the things he found shocking was that the students were not making use of the various materials available to them.

"The textbooks have solutions to the questions, if they go and do the research they will find the material. I was shocked to see how many students were asking me today for papers that I put together when the information is actually available to them," he said.

Klyon Green, a teacher at the Guy's Hill High School in St Catherine, agreed that students were not doing much work outside the classroom.

"They're not ready. They don't work on their own, they don't do any extra work," he said. "They just take what they learn at school and that's it."

"When they get something to do and you ask them about it in the next class they can't give an answer or work out the problem unless they look in their books," Green added.

Clement Radcliffe, principal of Glenmuir High School in Clarendon, conducts mathematics sessions on Monday at The Gleaner's Youthlink magazine CSEC examination technique seminar in St Andrew.

Terry-Ann Wilson (right), Gleaner corporate affairs officer, offers copies of the Youthlink magazine's CSEC feature, to students of the Pembroke Hall High School on Monday, during the news-paper's CSEC Exam Tech-niques Seminar at the Girl Guides headquarters, Waterloo Road, St Andrew.