With just a few weeks remaining before Barbados’ annual Common Entrance Examination, education leaders at two top Christ Church primary schools are sounding the alarm about pervasive gaps in students’ composition and reading comprehension skills — gaps that they warn could drag down the performance of even well-prepared test-takers, according to findings from a recent region-wide mock assessment.
Tyrone Marshall, principal of Water Street’s Milton Lynch Primary School, acknowledged that while the vast majority of students have dedicated significant time and effort to exam preparation, external socioeconomic factors often create unaddressed barriers to academic success. Many working parents in the community are forced to take on two or even three jobs to make ends meet, leaving them unable to provide consistent after-school support for their children’s studying. Even so, Marshall expressed cautious confidence in his students, noting that most have followed their teachers’ guidance closely and are on track to deliver solid results on exam day.
Fonda Boyce Small, principal of nearby Christ Church Girls’ School — also located on Water Street — echoed Marshall’s concerns, confirming that the mock exam’s results aligned with longstanding observations from classroom instructors. Educators at her school have spent months prioritizing extra practice for composition and comprehension, two areas that have consistently challenged student cohorts for years. Comprehension Section B, in particular, remains a persistent stumbling block for many test-takers. Small expressed hope that students would internalize the feedback from the mock assessment and apply their full effort when they sit for the official exam.
The cross-school mock assessment was organized and led by Quincy Jones, founder and director of the local Trident Charity, who administered the practice test to students across 12 institutions in the St Michael and Christ Church zones. During a visit to Water Street schools on Monday to distribute customized “11-Plus Kits” for upcoming test-takers, Jones — who is also the Democratic Labour Party candidate for the constituency in the upcoming February 11 general election — flagged a growing modern threat to formal writing performance: the informal, text-based language that students increasingly use on platforms like WhatsApp.
Jones pointed to the mock exam results that confirmed composition as the lowest-performing section across participating schools, highlighting common informal errors that students continue to make. Examples include grammatically incorrect phrasing such as “me and John” instead of the standard “John and I,” and casual text slang like abbreviating “you” to “U” and “because” to “BC” in formal essays. In the lead-up to the official exam, Jones encouraged students to focus on incorporating descriptive adjectives into their writing and mastering core technical rules like subject-verb agreement to avoid unnecessary point deductions.
Beyond test performance, Jones reminded the Class 4 students sitting for the exam that dedication and personal leadership matter more than the specific secondary school they gain admission to, emphasizing that every public secondary institution in Barbados has produced successful national leaders. As the countdown to the official exam continues, both school principals and the charity organizer have stressed that the immediate priority is building student confidence and helping learners correct the technical writing errors identified during the mock assessment.
