The Island Editorial

Children crying for justice

24 August 2016

We front-paged, on Tuesday, a picture of a child in tears among some crestfallen Grade Five Scholarship Examination (GFSE) candidates and their irate parents protesting against a serious lapse on the part of the invigilators at an examination centre. Those hapless students are reported to have lost 20 minutes of the time allocated for answering the question paper as they were not given proper instructions. It is only natural that their parents were fit to be tied.

The GFSE causes immense suffering to the young candidates and their parents alike as is common knowledge. It takes years of hard work for students to score enough marks to enter schools of their choice. Failing that examination is something they cannot come to terms with so easily. There have been instances where unsuccessful candidates even underwent cruel punishment at the hands of their frustrated parents. But, we have the main political parties boasting of their contribution to the development of the education sector!

There are various organisations campaigning hard to save free education, which has been reduced to a mere political slogan. Most state-run schools have outsourced teaching to the providers of supplementary tuition. Free school textbooks have, no doubt, stood the ordinary children in good stead. (The incumbent government has, in its wisdom, scrapped the provision of uniform material and introduced a voucher system in its place!) However, the prohibitive cost of private tuition, school transport etc makes one wonder whether it is a misnomer to call what is provided by the state-run school system free education.

The state, under successive governments, has manifestly failed in its duty by its citizenry to safeguard children’s right to education free from discrimination. Instead of making a determined effort to develop all schools so as to enable each and every child to receive a decent education governments during the last several decades have facilitated the development of only some of them and categorised them as 'popular schools'.

Most children from ordinary families fail to enter their dream schools for want of money to pay bribes or political influence. The only way they can think of realising their dream is to pass the GFSE. Some pundits in the garb of ministers attempted to abolish the GFSE some years ago and thankfully they were voted out of power. But, there is no guarantee that their successors will not do likewise. Being the only avenue available for the progeny of the ordinary people to gain admission to the so-called popular schools which are few and far between the GFSE must remain if all seats of learning cannot be developed.

A teachers' union has, in a brief interview with this newspaper, sought to lay the blame for bungling by some GFSE invigilators/supervisors at the Examinations Chief's doorstep. He has to take the flak for this sorry state of affairs, but the blame for that should be apportioned to the teachers on examination duty as well. There is no way they can absolve themselves of the responsibility for the serious lapses at issue.

Conducting an examination is not rocket science. Any teacher who cannot start an examination on time, distribute question papers and collect answer scripts as required by the Examinations Department is not worth his or her salt. It is time the trade unions in the education sector asked their members to pull up their socks without playing the blame game.

If the state is incapable of developing its school system it must at least ensure that the children who fail to secure admission to ‘popular’ schools can sit the GFSE without hassle in a bid to achieve their goal. The onus is on the government to probe the alleged bungling at examination centres and see to it that justice is done to the young victims.