Melis­sa Doughty

A prob­lem­at­ic ra­tio ques­tion in yes­ter­day's SEA proved dif­fi­cult for some pupils. Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh said yes­ter­day that Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer Har­ri­lal Seecha­ran in­formed him of the pupils' dif­fi­cul­ty. But the con­cept of ra­tios is "fun­da­men­tal to math­e­mat­ics," Gopeesingh said. The min­is­ter said Seecha­ran told him the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil (CXC) has been aligned with the cur­ricu­lum, and "it is noth­ing new."

He added that stu­dents be­ing un­able to an­swer the ques­tion was a "weak­ness on the part of the teacher," and that was why the min­istry con­tin­ued to mon­i­tor the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the cur­ricu­lum. Gopeesingh said all went ac­cord­ing to plan in yes­ter­day's ex­am. A school in Las Cuevas, he said, re­port­ed a pow­er out­age but the prob­lem was quick­ly rec­ti­fied when the prin­ci­pal called the Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) hot­line im­ple­ment­ed by the min­istry.

He said all schools start­ed on time and hoped all would go well in the mark­ing of the pa­pers by the CXC. The con­sen­sus among many of the 18,039 stu­dents who wrote yes­ter­day's ex­am was that the maths com­po­nent was "chal­leng­ing." "The maths was kind of hard but the lan­guage arts was easy," said 12-year-old Lean­na Richard, who at­tends St Ur­su­la's Girls' An­gli­can School.

Her moth­er Leslie- Ann Richard ex­pressed re­lief at the ex­am's end and thanked the prin­ci­pal and Stan­dard Five teacher at the all-girl An­gli­can school for the work done with her daugh­ter. The sen­ti­ment at Rich­mond Street Boys' dif­fered lit­tle. Leighton la Rosa de­scribed the ex­am as "slight­ly easy." La Rosa, who hopes to at­tend Queen's Roy­al Col­lege, al­so said the maths was a bit chal­leng­ing but the lan­guage arts was easy.

"All I did was re­mem­ber what my par­ents and teach­ers taught me," he said ex­cit­ed­ly, as a group of his friends gath­ered around him. At Sa­cred Heart Girls' RC, the cars of anx­ious par­ents lined the street. When they fin­ished the ex­am, the girls ran down the stair­case scream­ing.

One ju­bi­lant stu­dent jumped on her wait­ing moth­er and screamed, "It done! It done!" An­oth­er girl was seen cry­ing and hug­ging her moth­er, who quick­ly took her away. Sa­cred Heart Girls' stu­dent Aris­sa Ro­many al­so said the maths ex­am was chal­leng­ing but she too de­scribed the lan­guage arts as "easy." T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) gen­er­al sec­re­tary Pe­ter Wil­son said al­though the as­so­ci­a­tion heard re­ports of the prob­lem, the ex­ec­u­tive did not have enough in­for­ma­tion to com­ment.

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The Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry Schools Prin­ci­pals' As­so­ci­a­tion (NAPSPA) is call­ing on the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to dis­re­gard the prob­lem­at­ic ques­tion. In a state­ment, the as­so­ci­a­tion's pres­i­dent Lyns­ley A Doo­d­hai said while the SEA ran smooth­ly, the NAPSPA had re­ceived many com­plaints from prin­ci­pals about the con­tent of the maths com­po­nent of the SEA.

"Prin­ci­pals have com­plained to NAPSPA that ques­tion no 35 of the math­e­mat­ics pa­per was based on the top­ic 'Pro­por­tion and Ra­tio,' a top­ic that is no longer on the pri­ma­ry school math­e­mat­ics syl­labus, hav­ing been re­moved many years ago," Doo­d­hai said. He said the min­istry must en­gage in di­a­logue with the CXC to en­sure that such an un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent is not re­peat­ed in the fu­ture.

"NAPSPA is un­able to com­pre­hend how the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil, which has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for set­ting the SEA ex­am­i­na­tion, could have com­mit­ted this grave over­sight, one which NAPSPA con­sid­ers to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able," Doo­d­hai added. He al­so said NAPSPA hoped that the Cur­ricu­lum Di­vi­sion of the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry "would have guid­ed the CXC as to the top­ics that were to be test­ed."

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net press con­fer­ence, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she sym­pa­thised with stu­dents, and would seek a re­port on the mat­ter from the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter.