Tobago students the worst in the nation?
By Dr. Winford James
October 03, 2004
Posted: October 08, 2004
I have been very disturbed for some time now about analyses from the Ministry of Education that claim that Tobago-based primary schoolchildren have been returning the worst performance in the nation in the Common Entrance (CE) and Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) examinations. The matter was particularly troubling when Sat Maharaj pounced upon such analyses to rebut Selwyn Cudjoe's charge that Indo-Trinbagonian teachers might be willfully neglecting Afro-Trinbagonian children in their classrooms.
If the educational failure of Afro-Trinbagonian children was due to racial discrimination by Indo-Trinbagonian teachers, Maharaj asked pointedly, what was responsible for the failure of Tobagonian children who are taught almost exclusively by Afro-Trinbagonians, especially Afro-Tobagonians? The question is a powerful one insofar as it points us to see, in general, that educational failure in Trinidad and Tobago (and elsewhere for that matter) is a consequence of numerous factors and, in particular, that it cannot be facilely the consequence of the single factor of discrimination of Indians against Africans.
If Afros are doing worse than Indos in Trinidad, what are the factors responsible? I am not concerned with investigating the question in this column, but I must point out what should be patently obvious: context, the social context of education, ineluctably furnishes the factors bearing on the failure of children, and the latter include race and ethnicity.
Race and ethnicity may be factors in the educational failure of children in Tobago, but they can hardly be significant factors since, among other things, the vast majority of teachers and schoolchildren in Tobago are Afros (as Maharaj was quick to point out), and the postcolonial political directorate has been composed exclusively of Afros. In Tobago, therefore, unlike the state of affairs in Trinidad, the social context is empty of the factors of racial and ethnic discrimination against schoolchildren and so we must look to other social factors.
I will eventually look at these other factors in subsequent columns, but in the present I am concerned with testing the validity of the analysis that Tobago performs worse than Trinidad (comparing the two islands rather than the eight educational districts) in examinations for secondary placement. I shall use the performance of students in this year's examination, and I shall first present it in the form of a chart, then make some analytical comments. The data was analysed by Bobby Andrews, a researcher at the Policy Research and Development Institute (PRDI) of the Tobago House of Assembly.
Let me help you read the chart. On the horizontal axis, we find seven groups of scores, and on the vertical axis, the percentage of students making the scores. There are two columns for each group of scores, with the first column representing students in Trinidad and the second, students in Tobago. The percentages are written over the relevant columns and in the case of each column, they must be read as percentages of the number of students in Trinidad who did the examinations, in the one case, and of the number of students in Tobago, in the other case. When you add them up in each case, you will find that they amount to 100%.
The students were awarded marks from a minimum of 0 to a maximum of 212; the description '180' in respect of the seventh group means '180 to 212 marks'.
In respect of the first group of marks (0-29), the percentage of students from Trinidad population was greater than that from the Tobago population by more than twice the number of percentage points (4.4% vs 2.1%). In respect of the second group (30-59), there was also a greater proportion from Trinidad but the disparity this time is not that large, only just over one percent (8.3% vs. 7%). These two groups are the lowest groups of marks, and we see that there are greater proportions of students from Trinidad (12.7%) than from Tobago (9.1%) located in them.
For the next three groups, which feature higher marks, the picture changes. There are greater proportions of students from Tobago than from Trinidad scoring these higher marks. In respect of the 60-89 group, students from Tobago outscored their Trinidadian counterparts by some 3 percentage points. In respect of the 90-119 group, the percentage difference is bigger (4 points – 15.5% vs. 20.9%). And in respect of 120-149 group, the percentage difference is 7% (18.3% vs. 25.9%). In the middle groups, therefore, the students from Tobago did proportionately better (i.e., in terms of percentages of the relevant populations).
When we come to the two remaining groups – the high-end ones – we find that the proportions in Trinidad are greater, especially in respect of the highest group of marks. In respect of the 150-179 group, Trinidad outscores Tobago by just over 1 point (23.8% vs. 22.3%). But in the >180 group, it outscores Tobago by a whopping 10%! Which means that at the highest level of performance, students in Trinidad are outperforming students from Tobago.
To sum up, Bobby Andrews' chart presents the performance of students in 2004 according to seven groups of marks across the board. This kind of presentation allows us to see that Tobago did proportionately better than Trinidad in respect of the first five groups of marks, but that Trinidad did better in respect of the last two, especially the last group. What this means in essence is that Tobago is doing well in the SEA, but needs to excel. That is, far more students need to locate themselves in the 180 group of marks.
If my memory serves me right, the analyses that the Ministry of Education does do not focus on a distribution of students in the way Andrews presents the data, but rather on establishing the mean of performance and locating students in relation to that mean, whether below or above. That kind of analysis, though useful for particular purposes, will not allow us to see how students are distributed across the marks in the way Andrews' presentation does. In fact, it will skew the results in favour of students performing above the mean, and it is evident, even from this year's results, that there are significantly more Trinidadians performing above what we can guess is the mean.
I suspect that this method of analysis is responsible for the impression that Tobago has been doing poorly in the exams and, further, that it has routinely been the worst-performing of the eight educational districts.
It is clear from Andrews' presentation that Tobago is doing comparatively well in relation to most of the groups, but not so well where the highest group of marks is concerned. Tobago is therefore not excelling but that does not mean it is not doing well. The authorities in Tobago need to identify the factors preventing Tobago from excelling and proceed to take steps to improve the state of affairs.
I agree with Sat Maharaj: in respect of Tobago, race is not one of them.
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