Garcia: Govt schools improve in exams

Education Minister Anthony Garcia, on Friday, said there has been an improvement in the performance of students attending government schools in national exams. Garcia revealed this at the launch of the Education Management Information System (EMIS), at the ministry’s Education Towers, St Vincent Street, Port of Spain.

He also said it was extremely difficult to determine who to award scholarships because the performance levels of students were high. “It was not an easy task. We have been able to achieve in the education system an increased in the performance of students at every level.

“At the SEA level, we found out that most of our students are doing extremely well, although we still have to pay a lot of attention to those students who are not doing so well and fall within the 30 per cent pass-mark. But the figure is getting lower as the years go by."

For a student to move onto secondary level, He/she would have to attain above the 30 per cent pass-mark. Garcia said at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) level it is the same because the performance has been exceptionally well.

He said at the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination level, students are performing well. “Even with the scholarships, it is an exercise for us to decide who would be among the 400 people who would be beneficiaries from the scholarships.

“We get the information from CXC and we cannot interfere with the information that we get, but what we can do is really look at the best of the best. Our effort is to increase the quality of education and the quality of our products,” Garcia said.