The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has expressed regret that a survey it administered to children in the Barbados secondary school system offended many citizens.
Media reports out of Barbados state that “scores of parents have demanded that the “illegal” scripts completed by their children be returned to them. The test quizzed the 11-year-olds on gender and sexuality-related topics and also gathered information pertaining to the student’s parents.
In a brief statement, the IDB said it “sincerely apologizes, but stresses that no offense was intended.
“The questions at the center of concern, to which the Ministry of Education had objected prior to the administering of the survey, and which were inadvertently left in the paper, have been removed,” the IDB said, adding that it recognizes its position as a development partner with the Barbados government “with a long and mutually respectful relationship.”
It said it wanted to assure “Barbadians it would not deliberately engage in any practice that would harm that relationship.”
The Ministry of Education, Technological and Vocational Training has also issued an apology for its role in the administration of the controversial computer science test.
Chief Education Officer Dr. Ramona Archer-Bradshaw said the Ministry accepted responsibility for the test reaching first-formers at five secondary schools across the island.
“Notwithstanding the fact that the Inter-American Development Bank which administered the survey has already apologized for its failure to honor a prior commitment to the ministry to remove the offending questions before placing them before the children, the ministry now tenders its own apology.” Dr. Archer-Bradshaw said in a statement.
“Clearly, what has transpired has left us in no doubt that we took too much for granted in not vetting the final survey. The ministry now assures all stakeholders that the offensive scripts will now be destroyed and there will be no further use of the survey without our explicit and full scrutiny.
“More importantly, the ministry has already the process of reforming its own policy on data collection in our schools to ensure that incidents such as this are never repeated,” Archer-Bradshaw said.
The online publication, Barbados TODAY said it was reliably informed that the “frustrated and disappointed parents” made the request for the papers to be returned during an online Zoom meeting on Thursday evening convened with senior officials from the ministry and the IDB.
The publication said it was reliably informed that several of the parents accepted the apology of the chief education officer, made on behalf of the ministry, but maintained that they had not given permission for their children to be quizzed on such sensitive information.
“Sources related that the parents insisted that the Ministry of Education make the scripts available to them.
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