'GSAT is sinful!'

"It is sinful! Absolutely sinful!" declared Edward Seaga, chancellor of the University of Technology.

Speaking about the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT), the former Jamaican prime minister said the curriculum was overloaded with unnecessary information students would soon forget.

"This thing is the most terrifying thing to a child and the parents, especially because they are the ones who are piloting the child," Seaga said during a Gleaner Editors' Forum held at the newspaper's North Street, central Kingston, offices last Thursday.

"The fact of the matter is, what I see my child learning now, I never learnt 'til high school, and in some cases not at all," said the father of eight-year-old Gabrielle, who is just a few years away from sitting the exams.

"We have taken away their childhood years and cramming them with information they are going to forget a few years after," he lamented.

Addressing participants that gathered at the forum, Seaga said the GSAT was information-based rather than knowledge-based. He said it was time a curriculum be developed that teaches children how to think and not just load them with questions for which they must memorise the answers.

Seaga said the problem has been that GSAT is based on a Caribbean Examinations Council curriculum, and it is time a new approach be taken.

The GSAT has been plagued with controversy since it was introduced to replace the Common Entrance Examination in 1999.

Since 2004, the education ministry has been reviewing the programme, making a few changes over the years.