Toledo Has Bright Students but Still Lagging behind in P.S.E. Performance

Nelson Longsworth

You just heard about the bright students in Orange Walk, but there’s also another bright spot in the south.  In recent years, Toledo has been producing a handful of the top finishers in the P.S.E.  This year, they claimed five spots on the top twenty-five list.  Saint Peter Claver Primary took the fourth, fifth and twelfth places.  Toledo Christian Academy tied for seventh with Saint Benedict Primary in the south and another city school. Noticeably missing from the list was the Stann Creek District which has failed to produce top finishers in recent years. When we spoke with the Ministry of Education’s Director of Exams, Nelson Longsworth, on Tuesday, he praised the bright spots in Toledo. But he says the district is still lagging behind others in terms of overall performance.

Nelson Longsworth, Director of Examinations Unit, Ministry of Education

“That’s really kudos to those schools because a lot of hard work goes into getting those schools to excel. It shifted this year to Saint Peter Claver, last year it was the Punta Gorda Methodist that excelled and it is really encouraging to see that. On the flip side, though, we continue to see as a district Toledo is trailing and that is what needs to be fixed; the bottom half of the students. But we still need to take the good work that is being done at Saint Peter Claver to produce these quality results to they have this year. It is nice too because sometimes we believe that you have to be a private school to do well and we know that with good teaching, concerned parents and all the other things coming together, children in any school can do well.”

Andrea Polanco

“How did the Stann Creek district do overall, in terms of the ranking of schools?”

Nelson Longsworth

“Overall, they are still ahead of Toledo. We tend to not want to compare because the inputs are different. Reaching Toledo schools is always a big challenge to try and reach them, support them and so it is really a lot of resources needed to try and give them the same level of support and that is being worked on, I am sure. But the remoteness really affects how support can be provided. Stann Creek is really a turn because they were not showing much progress last year but we are seeing some improvements. One of the measures that I like to look at is the spread of results in a district; the standard deviation – we try to look at that to see how the students are performing in relation to one another in the districts. What we are finding is that Stann Creek has the smallest standard deviation which means that everybody is closer to learning what they need to learn. It is a good sign and all that happens now is that with more work will start to show some promise.”