Minister McConney takes responsibility: ‘The buck stops with me’ Loop Barbados

Black Immigrant Daily News

There will be no shifting of blame by the Minister of Education.

At a time when some are asking if the Chief Education Officer was being used as a scape goat of sorts to address irate and annoyed parents and guardians when the debacle surrounding the Computer Science pre-test unfolded this week, Minister Kay McConney, who was in Cabinet when the issue was brought to her attention, says that was not the case and she assures that the powers that be and officials know what is true. She said a decision was made and the Chief was tasked on Tuesday to address the nation.

Today, October 8, taking full responsibility for this “most serious matter”, during a press conference, she said:

“The Ministry of Education, Technological and Vocational Training (METVT), we accept our responsibility for the mistakes that have been made in the execution of the pre-test, which because it also had survey questions, changed it from being a pre-test to a different kind of data collection instrument. This was even after our ministry had objected to those survey questions, the pretest questions we had agreed to, but some of the survey questions were not agreed to by this ministry. But I know that this ministry must take responsibility for not having checked back well enough to make sure that what we asked to be removed was actually removed and because I am the minister with responsibility for this ministry, the buck stops with me. And I therefore, accept responsibility on behalf of the ministry that I lead for this unfortunate situation.”

Issuing yet another apology, the minister added her own to the mix.

“Not withstanding the apologies that have already been offered by our technical team, our administrative team and by our international development partner – the Inter-American Development Bank, despite those apologies, I want to again sincerely offer my apologies to the students, to the parents, to the teachers, to the principals, and to all who have been impacted negatively.”

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