Don’t water down national schols

THE EDITOR: I recently read that the Ministry of Education is considering revising the allocation of national scholarships. They want to promote the technical / vocational areas.

While I agree that there is need to focus more on these areas, the Ministry should not, by any stretch of its imagination, reduce the number of scholarships awarded in the other areas like science, mathematics, business, environment, language, etc.

We would not want a situation where someone in the traditional academic areas getting higher grades and not getting a scholarship while another person with lower grades in the technical/vocational areas and he/she receive a scholarship just because the Government wants to promote this area of study. This will be grossly unfair, unethical and de-motivating!

Scholarships should be awarded only to those who deserve them academically and it should not matter what study areas they come from. Once students achieve the required grades for the scholarships, they should be awarded the scholarships. This is the philosophy of scholarships in the first place – for the best performing students.

Right now, there are about 400 national scholarships annually following the CAPE exams. These should be given to the top 400 students no matter their area of study. The Government should also not use a quota system to give x number of scholarships per subject area. We will end up with people with lesser grades than others getting scholarships. It must be strictly meritorious! It’s the fairest way.

The solution is a medium to long term one. It is to strengthen the student’s performance in the technical/vocational areas and bring them up to the performance level of the other areas that usually get the scholarships. Anything different will be to artificially promote an area to the detriment of other well-performing areas. It will be foolish to weaken the strong to strengthen the weak!

Further, when setting any new criteria for scholarships, the Government must ensure that students are informed of such when they are selecting their subjects at CAPE Level One and not after they have chosen their subjects and are mid-stream in the process. Many students choose CAPE subjects based on publicised subject combinations for scholarship categories. A matter on this is already before the courts.

I Ramdhanie via email