Opposition Leader Ralph Thorne Criticizes Government’s Decision to Abolish Barbados Common Entrance Exam, Calls for Public Consultation

Opposition Leader Ralph Thorne has sharply criticised the government’s move to abolish the Barbados Secondary School Entrance Examination – commonly known as the common entrance or 11-plus exam – demanding immediate public consultation.

“When this government threatens to dismantle a system that it does not understand, then this government must stand condemned for betraying the interests of people in this country,” he argued on Tuesday in his response to the government’s Budget.

Describing the test as “sacred, but not perfect”, Thorne said the government had an obligation to openly communicate with beneficiaries and potential beneficiaries about the usefulness of the test.

The Christ Church South MP suggested that low marks in the exam were not due to problems with the test itself, but rather issues within the education system.

He said: “There are problems in the primary schools. A child fails an 11-Plus exam. He doesn’t fail that exam on that morning. He has been failing from the time he was four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 (years). His failure has been daily, weekly and yearly.”

He was adamant that the test, which has been in place for several decades, “must not be a subject for callous dismantling, unless the people who are invested in that scheme and in that system, are given fair opportunity to say how they feel about it”.

“That has been this government’s failure,” he asserted. “That this government has not consulted with the people of this country.”

Thorne also briefly touched on the issue of brain drain and Barbados losing many of its young people to other countries.

“One of the tragedies of modern life in Barbados is that we have lost so many of our bright young people, and we used to lose our bright young people on the basis of temporary sojourns in the metropolitan domains. But this group is telling you that they’re not coming back here, perhaps on holiday and tragically, to a funeral, but we’re raising a generation in this country that is not feeling that commitment to this society, and that is a tragedy,” he lamented while urging the present political generation to take joint responsibility to address this.