Cheating teachers rapped for fixing SBA grades

JAMAICAN TEACHERS who fraudulently mark up students’ School-Based Assessment (SBA) coursework have been condemned for undermining the integrity of the education system and robbing children of valuable experience needed for transitioning into adulthood.

That rebuke by Dr Faithlyn Wilson, the president of the Jamaica Independent Schools Association (JISA), comes in the wake of an April 25 Sunday Gleaner report citing the adjusting of SBA marks for Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) candidates in a bid to ensure favourable pass rates and to maintain school rankings.

Wilson said that attempts to manipulate grades were an injustice.

“We are not expecting teachers to do the work for the children. What kind of university students or adults are those children going to be if we do what they should do, and they do not get to develop as they should as a result?” Wilson told The Gleaner in an interview on Wednesday.

With schools closed for most of the last 13 months since the outbreak of COVID-19, Jamaican students have suffered significant learning loss because of stop-start in-person classes as well as Internet connectivity woes and access challenges to computers.

Wilson, whose organisation represents 150 of the approximately 600 private schools in Jamaica, said that SBA coursework was a critical part of students’ development.

“No report of private schools being involved in this has come to me, but I would find it very surprising if any teachers or any school at all, be it private or public, would be actually doing SBAs for students. Completing their SBAs is part of the students’ development, and if that is done for them, then they would have missed the developmental experience that completing the SBA is supposed to provide,” said Wilson.

DELAY EXAMS

The JISA president suggested instead that students sit CSEC examinations at a later time, especially given the ongoing restrictions caused by the pandemic.

“There are certain challenges that I know students have, so therefore if they cannot complete their learning experiences effectively, I do not think there is anything wrong with having them delay that process or repeating it as needed,” said Wilson.

There was a barrage of criticism from students and teachers across the region about unfavourable outcomes after the Caribbean Examinations Council’s (CXC) policy shift to modify the assessment process to minimise disruption in the education system amid the COVID-19 pandemic. That decision will continue in the future.

Education Minister Fayval Williams has also expressed outrage over the allegations and urged administrators to prevent a repeat of the concerns in the 2021 sitting.

“We want students to take their tests and be as authentic as they can with the sources that they use, carefully document, and we want all our teachers who are involved in the process to have the highest level of integrity,” the education minister said last October.

In the 46-page report dated October 16, the chief examiners cited a lack of thoroughness and vigilance by teachers while marking SBAs.

This led to the award of full marks, in some instances, for areas that students did not even attempt, CXC examiners said.