Jamaica was never slated to be part of a controversial survey that was to be administered to secondary students in several schools across the Caribbean, the local education ministry has said.
But following last week’s uproar in Barbados over the execution of the contentious survey in that CARICOM country, Jamaican school officials are paying keen attention.
The survey was part of ‘Code Caribbean: Promoting STEAM for Innovation in the Caribbean’, a project of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), of which seven Caribbean countries, including Jamaica, are a part.
Late last week, the development financing body was forced to issue a statement of apology as it promised to withdraw the survey after Barbadian parents raised an alarm about that aspect of the project, which they deemed “distasteful and invasive”.
The parents blasted the IDB and the country’s Ministry of Education, Technological and Vocational Training over what was supposedly an examination dubbed a “pretest on computer science” that was reportedly given to first-form students.
Parents complained that the so-called test was instead a survey that quizzed their children about their sexuality, gender identity, and substance abuse, and asked for information on their parents.
According to news outlet Barbados Today, which broke the story in a piece headlined ‘Alarming Test’ last Tuesday, the two-hour examination contained close to 300 questions and parents only learnt of its detail through their children, some of whom were left traumatised.
The students were also asked to write their names on the paper, the reports said.
Since then, the parents have demanded that the controversial test papers be turned over to them, threatening legal action.
The IDB and the education ministry in Barbados have since apologised to disgruntled parents and their children, and have promised to remove that element of the programme, which the IDB said was “inadvertently left in the paper” following objections from the education ministry.
In an online meeting on Thursday, Sabine Rieble-Auburay, a social development specialist with the IDB, reportedly told upset parents that the questions were standard and were administered to 11- and 17-year-olds to provide “a realistic view of the child”.
She was also reported as saying it was also administered in Jamaica and Belize, a statement which left some local educators on edge.
However, Maureen Dwyer, permanent secretary in Jamaica’s Ministry of Education and Youth, yesterday told The Sunday Gleaner that although Jamaica was part of the ‘Code Caribbean: Promoting STEAM for Innovation in the Caribbean’ project, the country was not part of the controversial test and survey aspects of it.
“Jamaica is definitely not involved in that study. When I spoke to the IDB rep, she assured me that Barbados and Belize were the two countries selected to be involved in that … . There are no plans for Jamaica to be involved,” Dwyer said.
According to the IDB, which is collaborating with Code.org, Trust for the Americas, and the ministries of education in the respective Caribbean countries for the implementation of the initiative, “the Code Caribbean project seeks to train human capital in the countries of the region with an innovative approach based on science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM).
“The project seeks to strengthen the digital, life and entrepreneurship skills of students, so that they are better prepared to enter the labour market. We seek to expand this innovative approach to the entire region, but we are starting with the Caribbean because it has been falling behind in these areas.”
Barbados and Belize were selected for the pilot project from among seven Caribbean countries that are part of the regional initiative. The other countries are Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Suriname, Guyana and The Bahamas.
Representatives from both the National Parent-Teacher Association of Jamaica (NPTAJ) and the Jamaica Association of Principals of Secondary Schools (JAPSS) said the programme, which the IDB said was launched in 2019, was news to them.
NPTAJ President Stewart Jacobs described the issue facing students and parents in Barbados as startling.
“I share every concern and question raised in the reports from Barbados. I, too, am enraged about the situation, just reading its contents,” Jacobs fumed. “It is [an] invasion of privacy on a large scale. Imagine these young children being traumatised doing 300 questions in two hours under the pretext of a computer science exam.
“Somebody or somebodies at both the IDB and the ministry had some ulterior motives … and hearing that Jamaica was also targeted means our own Ministry of Education and Youth are answerable to us,” he charged before Dwyer confirmed that Jamaica was not included.
JAPSS President Linvern Wright was also in the dark.
“I have not heard about it here in Jamaica, but similar issues had surfaced some years ago in our home and family life education,” he offered, recalling that that matter was not taken kindly by the Jamaican populace. “I think, however, that if it did take place, I would have heard about it.”
Wright was referencing the public uproar in 2012 over the health and family life education curriculum that was being taught in schools, with concerns that aspects of it encouraged homosexuality.
It was subsequently withdrawn and revised in 2013 with then Education Minister Ronald Thwaites indicating that it was not age-appropriate and sensitive to the traditional beliefs and practices of the Jamaican society.
Two other high school principals contacted by The Sunday Gleaner yesterday also said they were not aware of the Code Caribbean test being administered locally, and that their students were not part of it.
In the meantime, in the apology issued by the IDB after the uproar in Barbados, the organisation said it “expresses regret that a survey administered by the Bank to children in the Barbados secondary school system has offended many Barbadians”.
“The Bank sincerely apologises, but stresses that no offence was intended. The questions at the centre of concern, to which the Ministry of Education had objected prior to the administering of the survey and which were inadvertently left in the paper, have been removed,” it said further.