Basseterre: St. Kitts, May 17, 2021: The Curriculum Development Unit (CDU) hosted a one-day workshop for grade six teachers within the Federation. The workshop, on Monday May 17 at the Windsor School of Medicine Conference room was held under the theme ‘Preparing Fair and Equitable End of Year Assessments’.
Mrs. Amanda Serrant- Edmead, Director of CDU reassured teachers the focus is really on improving the quality of teaching in the Federation.
“All that we do is to make sure that we improve the quality of teaching in the Federation. We are really making a lot of movement in building a federal system of education”, she said.
Mrs. Serrant-Edmead, noted that one of the major changes brought about by the introduction of the Enhanced Curriculum is the move away from traditional testing to one that is balanced and continuous in nature. Thus, the purpose of the workshop is to expose teachers to the skills of creating quality summative assessments.
“We want to ensure that when you do design these assessments that they are quality assessments. There is no one exam or test…that is going to determine a child’s trajectory in the future. The exams are just a small component of the students’ performance,” she expressed.
Addressing the participants, Ms. Zahnela Claxton, Principal Education Officer in the Nevis Island Administration Education Department reinforced reasons for the workshop.
She expressed, “we are not here today to build an end of term exam for this term…we are here to work on skills for summative assessments that we will use this term, next term and the many terms to come…these skills are meant to improve and enhance all our professional skill set”.
The Curriculum Development Unit ensures that teachers are fully equipped to implement the New Enhanced Curriculum so as to make them more effective as they work in the best interest of all their students.
—30—
