?Re­li­gious schools top awards

They must have the best re­sults. Stu­dents/par­ents put these schools as their first choice. If you lev­el the play­ing field by zon­ing schools and not giv­ing church schools a cent of gov­ern­ment mon­ey–let them pay their own teach­ers–you will see how great they re­al­ly are. This is the way first world de­vel­oped coun­tries do it. We are re­al­ly sac­ri­fic­ing the gov­ern­ment schools so that we could ma­m­aguy the church schools. It's time to move away from prop­a­gat­ing su­per­sti­tion, mind con­trol by prop­ping up or­gan­ised re­li­gion with tax dol­lars. We will nev­er get to be­ing a de­vel­oped coun­try (not that we ever could). Ed­u­ca­tion does us no good when at the end of the day we are no bet­ter off than our il­lit­er­ate an­ces­tors.

Kram

Take away fund­ing from the "church" schools Kram? Let them pay their own teach­ers? Come on now, where are you liv­ing? If this is done, then the State would not be able to send suc­cess­ful SEA stu­dents to these schools any­more. What you are sug­gest­ing is to pri­va­tise these "church" schools. Par­ents would now have to fork out big mon­ey to ed­u­cate their chil­dren. I am a re­sult of the pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem of T&T, and even though I'm a pen­sion­er, I still thank this coun­try for what it has giv­en me. I think the re­al prob­lem lies in the Pub­lic Ser­vice where teach­ers, just like po­lice of­fi­cers and so many oth­er gov­ern­ment work­ers, no longer want to work.

ep­som­salts

I won­der how stu­dents would per­form if they did re­al Ad­vanced Lev­el sub­jects like Cam­bridge GCE? The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion got rid of one of the best and uni­ver­sal­ly recog­nised ex­ams and re­placed it with CAPE to make it eas­i­er for bobol.

rick­yt23

I say, bril­liant­ly all the time, ricky23. While I re­spect your view re "re­al Ad­vanced Lev­el sub­jects," I beg to dif­fer. CAPE is a well-de­signed ex­am­i­na­tion which is geared to­ward mea­sur­ing the per­for­mance of an in­de­pen­dent, in­quir­ing stu­dent. While no one can ques­tion the val­ue and ex­cel­lence and in­tegri­ty of the tra­di­tion­al British-based ex­ams (Cam­bridge, Lon­don, Ox­ford), it seems to me that those ex­ams are not to­tal­ly rel­e­vant to Caribbean so­ci­ety. In my view, CXC is do­ing an ex­cel­lent job. Sure there are glitch­es here and there, some crit­i­cal. Even the British ex­ams are sus­cep­ti­ble to this. Our in­dige­nous CXC ex­ams present eval­u­a­tion in­stru­ments that seek to mea­sure the abil­i­ties of Caribbean stu­dents in so far as the syl­labus is con­cerned. But CXC goes be­yond that. It ac­tu­al­ly sets the pa­ra­me­ters of the whole sec­ondary school cur­ricu­lum. Judg­ing from their per­for­mance both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly in the ter­tiary sec­tor, it is self-ev­i­dent that our CXC-bred stu­dents can slug it out "pound for pound" with any and all in the out­side world, in­clud­ing the vaunt­ed "brains" of Asians. No one should fair­ly ques­tion the bril­liance of our Caribbean stu­dents, es­pe­cial­ly those from T&T. They will per­form bril­liant­ly, no mat­ter what ex­am is giv­en to them. Stay up, young peo­ple, and con­grats to all who passed their ex­ams.

amir­jairam

Two more guns found

What, on­ly two? Rem­nants? Easy ex­cuse.

Jumbie's Watch

What's re­al­ly go­ing on? Can some­one be hon­est with the pub­lic? I was un­der the im­pres­sion, mis­guid­ed it may be, that we hired men and women, trained them and sent them out to work as po­lice of­fi­cers–and in ac­cor­dance with their oath: to pro­tect and serve the cit­i­zens of this coun­try. Some of our se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials are fa­mous for their de­nials that crime was grow­ing rapid­ly, and stran­gling the lifeblood out of our peo­ple. If our of­fi­cers are of the opin­ion that there is no crime for them to con­trol, some may be­lieve that they had bet­ter get in­volved in an­oth­er pro­fes­sion, as en­tre­pre­neurs–in the busi­ness of deal­ing in il­le­gal guns and drugs and oth­er crim­i­nals acts, on time paid for by the tax­pay­ers.

These of­fi­cers are guilty of gross mis­be­hav­iour and il­le­gal acts, and so too are the of­fi­cers who are privy to these vi­o­la­tions and kept qui­et for rea­sons un­known. We are asked to work with the po­lice if we want to re­duce crime, but how can we do so when the very of­fi­cers we may turn to are them­selves no bet­ter than the crim­i­nals out­side who are ter­ror­is­ing us. When we have lost faith in our pro­tec­tive ser­vices, where in heav­en's name should we turn?

Gar­de­nia

Rem­nants? Wasn't the sta­tion thor­ough­ly searched in the first in­stance?

pe­ter

Maybe Mr Philbert will trans­fer the re­cent new trans­fer­ees!

Rik Hansel