KE­JAN HAYNES

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by Dol­ly is telling par­ents not to blame them­selves or to be ashamed to send their chil­dren to the re­me­di­al class­es be­ing pro­vid­ed to stu­dents who un­der­per­formed in this year’s SEA ex­am.

She made the com­ment at the Post Cab­i­net news brief­ing on Thurs­day. Dol­ly ac­knowl­edged the Va­ca­tion Re­vi­sion Pro­gramme over the Ju­ly Au­gust Va­ca­tion did not have the de­sired turnout. The pro­gramme was not manda­to­ry, but the Min­is­ter would not say if it would be soon at a lat­er time. An­oth­er com­plaint raised by par­ents and through com­ments on so­cial me­dia, was stu­dents could be shamed by their peers by be­ing sin­gled out for re­me­di­al class­es.

Stu­dents who per­formed poor­ly will al­so have to sit an­oth­er ex­am called the “Low­er Sec­ondary Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am” in two years.

Dol­ly said there should be no blame, nor shame in ac­cess­ing the ser­vices pro­vid­ed by the gov­ern­ment. She called on par­ents to “re­lease them­selves from the bur­den of blame.

“Be­cause the shame some­times comes from blame,” she said. “We have to un­der­stand that this is a glob­al phe­nom­e­non, and we are not the on­ly coun­try that’s is of­fer­ing make­up op­por­tu­ni­ties for chil­dren.

She used the ex­am­ple of stu­dents at the up­per sec­ondary lev­el to sit pri­vate ex­am­i­na­tions in Jan­u­ary.  She said these are gen­er­al­ly pa­tro­n­ised by those who may not have achieved what they ex­pect­ed to in their usu­al ex­am­i­na­tions.  She said there is no shame in that.

“And so what I want to say to par­ents first, re­lease your­self from the blame. This pan­dem­ic was hard on every­one, and many of our chil­dren may have per­formed what we con­sid­er a sub­par based on what their po­ten­tial is, but this was the best that they could do at this time based on the chal­lenges that they faced,” she said.

Dol­ly went on to say when par­ents ac­cept their chil­dren didn't do as well as they could or they should have, it’s ok to seek the help that is re­quired.

“So I want to say to par­ents, it is dis­ap­point­ing in some cas­es, it is frus­trat­ing in some cas­es, and yes, you may feel em­bar­rassed, but there is a worse shame in­volved in an adult who is un­der­pre­pared to take care of them­selves,” she said. “There's a worse shame in­volved when we have chil­dren who are mis­be­hav­ing and then you have to get the law en­force­ment in­volved.”