Non-nationals ‘must meet’ 11-Plus criteria

Children born outside of Barbados must fulfil certain criteria in order to write the Barbados Secondary Schools’ Entrance Examination slated for Tuesday, May 5.

This was among the directives announced by education officer in the Examinations and Assessment Section of the Ministry of Educational Transformation, Donna Roberts, during a town hall meeting to discuss administering this year’s exam, also known as the 11-Plus or Common Entrance, at Princess Margaret Secondary School St Philip last Saturday evening.

Parents at the well-attended meeting held in the Reginald Lewis Auditorium were also reminded of exam times, flexible transfers, deferrals, the zones and the importance of coordinating with their respective schools, among other regulations.

“Usually for this examination, we know not every student in the school is born in Barbados. As long as you were born outside of Barbados, there is a special form you will need to complete to submit to us for the child to write the examination. This form will be accompanied by the child’s birth certificate and a copy of a student visa,” Roberts said.

“Now, for persons who are CARICOM nationals, you just need immigration status for the parent – so, the birth certificate and, instead of the student visa, immigration status of the parent. “If your child was born outside of Barbados, but they have obtained citizenship by whatever means, we would not know when we see the child’s birth certificate,” she noted, adding that proof of Barbadian citizenship was still needed. “You will present the child’s birth certificate and that document you will have to receive from the Immigration Department or a copy of the child’s Barbados ID card for us.” Roberts also explained the concepts of flexible transfer, deferral, early sitter and exemption.

“Flexible transfer means we recognise that children learn at different rates. Therefore, a child may be permitted to write the examination earlier than 11 years, one year later than 11 years, or the child can be exempted, which means they do not write the examination at all.

“Deferral is a term we use for those persons who will delay writing the examination by one year. Usually, the criteria for deferral [are] that the child must be scoring less than 20 per cent in both mathematics and English across the two years of Class 2 and Class 3 – we do not look at the Class 4 performance – or the child, for whatever reason, did not complete the syllabus,” she said.

Roberts told parents that early sitters will be permitted to write the exam before they reached the age of 11 but must be scoring more than 85 per cent in both English and mathematics throughout Classes 2 and 3, and complete the Class 4 syllabus.

She said exemption meant not taking the test.

“Usually, we have an idea beforehand of those students who are likely to be exempted because they are already known to our student services section within the ministry. These are children who have difficulty reading at the level of a Class 1 student, students who have challenges performing basic number operations. So the ability to add, do simple multiplication, subtraction, division, is too much for them.”

(JS)

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