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| ??Minister of Education, Ronald Jones, addressing a press conference, after 11-Plus results were released,??yesterday at the Elsie Payne Complex. (A.Miller/BGIS) |
Approximately 95 per cent or (3,753) of the 3,970 students, who sat the Barbados Secondary Schools’ Entrance Examination (BSSEE) have been allocated places in public secondary schools.
This was revealed yesterday by Minister of Education and Human Resource Development, Ronald Jones, as he addressed the media on this year’s results.
While pointing out that for the first time ever no student received a bursary, Mr. Jones, however, noted that the Ministry had been tasked with manually placing an additional 217 students within the school system.?? This was necessary because those particular parents did not select enough schools on their choice forms.
"They [the parents] would have stopped may be at two or three or four choices. But [you would find] that as the [computer] system works they would not have been picked up to be allocated a space in the school to which they would have normally been allocated."
Adding that 158 students had been also allocated in this manner last year, Mr. Jones stressed: "When parents don’t make a sufficient choice it places those students at a disadvantage because nowhere in the records, that would have been submitted, would you find those students name popping up because… they would have made the very narrow choice and might get a mark that might not comply with the narrow choice
made. You would [then] find that they would be allocated across the schools where space might be considered available."
Stating that space continued to be an issue within schools, he said: "With the increased numbers this year we are going to be a bit tight in basically all of our schools."