Dur­ing the next 30 days, we will cel­e­brate our 62nd In­de­pen­dence Day and 48th Re­pub­lic Day. Rough­ly two gen­er­a­tions have been re­spon­si­ble for build­ing the foun­da­tion for the fu­ture. The sons and daugh­ters of these two gen­er­a­tions are now re­spon­si­ble for this coun­try’s fu­ture. The first gen­er­a­tion would have had lit­tle prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence in na­tion­al build­ing, and all who had any ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion would have been ed­u­cat­ed abroad with­out man­age­ment ex­pe­ri­ence in a lo­cal con­text and a dif­fer­ent glob­al en­vi­ron­ment.

Since in­de­pen­dence, the task has been to build the mech­a­nisms and in­sti­tu­tions to ed­u­cate the younger gen­er­a­tions to take charge of our des­tiny and to im­prove the in­her­i­tance and in­ter­gen­er­a­tional trans­fer to our chil­dren. That is why so much mon­ey has been spent on the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem from pri­ma­ry to the ter­tiary lev­el.

Ed­u­ca­tion is not de­sired sim­ply for its own sake, but to en­sure that our chil­dren and grand­chil­dren will have a bet­ter fu­ture and a high­er stan­dard of liv­ing than our cur­rent gen­er­a­tion. We are not ed­u­cat­ing peo­ple to em­i­grate and con­tribute to the de­vel­op­ment of oth­er coun­tries.

This is the con­text in which we must re­view the CSEC and CAPE re­sults re­leased last week by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. These young adults are the coun­try’s fu­ture. And their re­sults sig­nal the po­ten­tial for the coun­try's de­vel­op­ment. While an ex­am­i­na­tion re­sult is not the end of one’s ed­u­ca­tion process, the over­all re­sults in­di­cate whether the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem is achiev­ing its ob­jec­tive. If not, we must iden­ti­fy the changes nec­es­sary to im­prove the sys­tem. Even a cur­so­ry ex­am­i­na­tion of the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry’s me­dia re­lease gives se­ri­ous cause for con­cern.

The CAPE re­sults are good. It shows the ben­e­fits of stu­dents fo­cus­ing on the sub­jects they have se­lect­ed. In 2024, 95.47 per cent (30,739) of writ­ten CAPE sub­ject en­tries achieved ac­cept­able pass­es (Grades I-V) com­pared to 96.08 per cent (29, 242) in 2023.

How­ev­er, the CSEC re­sults are not as pos­i­tive. The re­lease notes that 45.55 per cent of 14,035 sit­ting the ex­am re­ceived a full cer­tifi­cate; that is, five sub­jects or more, in­clud­ing Maths and Eng­lish (6,393). This means that 54.45 per cent did not meet the min­i­mum re­quired scholas­tic lev­el of achieve­ment.

This has se­vere im­pli­ca­tions since Math­e­mat­ics and Eng­lish are the ba­sis for ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­gres­sion in many fur­ther ar­eas of study or oc­cu­pa­tion. Math­e­mat­ics is al­so a pre­req­ui­site for at­tempt­ing any sci­ence sub­ject at the CAPE lev­el. There­fore, with­out Maths and Eng­lish, these stu­dents will not qual­i­fy for CAPE. It is al­so an im­por­tant re­quire­ment for mov­ing on to the ter­tiary lev­el. These stu­dents may not qual­i­fy for con­tin­u­ing to ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion or ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions and will need to have re­me­di­al ed­u­ca­tion of­fered.

The key to de­vel­op­ing the na­tion’s in­dus­tri­al and eco­nom­ic ca­pac­i­ty is a foun­da­tion in an ed­u­ca­tion in sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, en­gi­neer­ing and math­e­mat­ics (STEM).

Yet the CSEC re­sults show that this is a mul­ti-year weak­ness. 18,844 stu­dents wrote SEA in 2019 and in 2024, and five years lat­er, 14,456 stu­dents at­tempt­ed five sub­jects at CSEC. What hap­pened to the oth­er 4,388 chil­dren who did the SEA in 2019? This sta­tis­tic is even more fright­en­ing, as it means that 76 per cent of the 2019 SEA co­hort does not ap­pear to have reached this lev­el.

This is an as­ton­ish­ing sta­tis­tic and rais­es se­ri­ous doubts about the ef­fi­ca­cy of the cur­rent ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and its im­pli­ca­tion for the sta­bil­i­ty of the so­cial fab­ric. This means the per­for­mance at the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary lev­els re­quires a sys­temic in­ter­ven­tion.