Students must compete on global playing field
At the start of a new school year, we are pleased by recent initiatives designed to push Virgin Islands students to compete on an international level.
Starting next spring, for example, government will require all public high school graduates to take the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate exams, a series of standardised tests administered to students around the region. And in a related initiative, the CSEC scores will be used to determine which students receive national scholarships.
Such steps are beneficial because they apply an internationally recognised standard to academic assessment in the territory.
From an early age, VI students need to know how they measure up against their counterparts around the world — not just against their peers in this small community.
Unfortunately, in the past VI leaders have shown a tendency to praise student performance loudly whenever it might be politically expedient, even if the students don’t necessarily deserve such kudos. As a result, we fear, some students may have been led to believe that a subpar performance is acceptable and an average performance is exceptional.
This is a great disservice: Almost all graduates will find themselves competing on the international stage soon after earning a diploma.
Young people who go abroad will face such competition at a university or in the workplace. Others who choose to stay home will face it right here: Some 60 percent of the workforce in the territory is composed of expatriates, many of whom are very high achieving.
The new requirements, then, nicely complement the school system’s progress toward international accreditation — a much-needed benchmark that has been slow in coming and should be a top priority.
At the same time, students should also be encouraged to take the Scholastic Aptitude Test, which is an important assessment tool for the United States universities to which many VI graduates will apply.
Other encouraging news in recent months includes government’s plan to establish school boards. If properly implemented, this measure, we hope, will provide a badly needed buffer between schools and politics.
All told, then, we believe there is reason for optimism in the education system in spite of major challenges. However, in order to succeed, the planned initiatives will need to be carried out effectively and efficiently, with ample input from educators, parents and students.
As the economy continues to struggle, the territory must do all it can to prepare its young people for an uncertain future.