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Hon. Patrick Faber - Minister of Education
"Let me point out from the start that I am not here to defend."

Jules Vasquez reporting
Today's press conference, with presentations from Ministry officials, and attendance form school principals and managers was about the PSE, not defending the consistently abysmal grades, but, in a sense sharing of the blame.

Hon. Patrick Faber
"To fix these problems in education, we will need everybody's support in order to make sure that it is successful and so for those people are waiting on 'superman' as it is said, to come down and do everything - it's not going to happen."

But what is happening according to the Chief Education Officer Chris Aird - is a mild upward trend even in math where over three thousand students got less than 50% - a failing grade:

Chris Aird - Chief Education Officer
"In the case of Math - the mean score in 2009 was 46.2 and 2013 54.2. Most students continue to score the E grade range and this is a cause for concern, something must be addressed to cross the system. It is very likely a matter of competence in the delivery of Math."

But he says students are showing greater competence:

Chris Aird "Apart from 2009 we're almost nine times as many students scored E's as those who scored A's in 2009. In the years 2010, 2012, 2013 that ratio decreased to around three times more, scoring E's than A's, which indicates that efforts are being made to address these issues. The overall conclusion would be that Math performance has been relatively stable and that doesn't mean that it's a good thing because we would all want to see our students doing better than they are. The question is not what the exam results show from one year to the next, it is what interventions we are taking."

And that was the recurrent theme of today's two hour press conference, that much is being done, but everyone has to do more:

Hon. Patrick Faber
"We're not saying we're looking to find a new strategy because all is falling down - no. There are things in place so we are merely using this opportunity to say our stakeholder, partners 'help us we need you to be doing your part'. It's easy for us to say that nothing is happening, it's not going backward. I was looking at the Match scores from last year, it fell .2 points and one headline in the media was 'we're doing worst than last year'. Well .2 is negligible - the worst that you can say is that we're not moving forward."

And much of that lack of progress rests with untrained teachers and unresponsive managements says Faber:

Hon. Patrick Faber
"We've seen how untrained teachers have been placed in the rural areas; we've seen where untrained teachers are placed at the early childhood level. These are the decisions made by the managements and principals that can create tremendous harm. How is it that we expect children to pass the PSE when they can't read and they can't write? This is a concern we've discussed to death. You can't!. You don't learn to read and write in Standard 5 and Standard 6 - you learn to read and write at the very early stages of your education, informative year - early childhood. I urge you principals now and teachers, if you have people in your schools who don't love our children then tell them to get out because it damages us and it damages and affects these scores."

And when it comes to education or miseducation, there's no shortage of blame to go around:

Hon. Patrick Faber
"What have the parents been up to? Terribly missing, you ask any principal that calls a PTA meeting and they will tell you that the parents don't show up."

Right up to the ministry where administrative bloat takes the place of oversight:

Hon. Patrick Faber
"You know we spend close to 200 million dollars a year but if you look at what we spend that money on, there's no real question why we have these issues. Very little is spent on monitoring and evaluating in the system, policing the system if you will - if one percent of that money is spent on it - that's a lot. What do we spend the money on? Salaries, we have too many teachers, I will go on record one more time and I will get it in trouble. We have too many schools and too many teachers - we need to amalgamate some of these schools that are scattered all across the country where we are paying teachers. I'm not saying to fire people and in some cases they are not qualified to be teachers, they are qualified to be something else anyway, that's the truth. You heard me say that we're up to 54% trained teachers at the Primary School level that means 46% of them are trained to do something else, so they shouldn't cry."

But, right now the only ones left crying are the kids – and there are literally thousands of them - who get the failing grade:

Jules Vasquez
"But in fact it is preposterous that the teachers should be requesting a raise when by all outward indications they have failed and parents have failed, and the ministry has failed and you have failed. There has been universal failure. But only one person gets the 'F' - poor thirteen and fourteen year old students who have to leave with that scarlet letter for the rest of their young lives. They are told ' da unu duncy, we will get 30% raise and Minister will get his new Montero - everything is hunky dorey at our level'. At what point will the charade end?"

Hon. Patrick Faber
"I don't believe that our system is a failure. I don't believe that students who did not perform at what we would hope that they performed are failures and in fact if you check it out, you will find out that a failing grade on the PSE does not end a child's chance of getting an education. It is not the end of a child's educational career if the child does not get above a 50 on the PSE. That's absolute nonsense. That child is not deemed a failure in life because of that, we're not destroying. If High School started to take only those students who got over 50 they would be in problems under the new financing regime at the High School level. You get paid by the number of students that you take in. You get paid by the kind of students that you take in as well. So you take more students that are coming from poor socio-economic background , then you get money according to that formula. You take students who come from economically challenge backgrounds, you get more money. You take less students in a year, you get less money. So I am convinced that that measure alone is strong enough to make sure that schools are going out there attracting."

And with that Faber made one last pitch for everyone to pitch in:

Hon. Patrick Faber
"If management and schools and the parents and the union are not working with us in the Ministry, it ain't going to happen my friends."