An­na-Lisa Paul

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly is con­fi­dent there will no hin­drances im­ped­ing the smooth ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am on Ju­ly 1.

And she is as­sur­ing teach­ers, par­ents and stu­dents that all mea­sures will be in place in­clud­ing the req­ui­site num­ber of in­vig­i­la­tors that are need­ed.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions via What­sApp yes­ter­day, Gads­by-Dol­ly said, “Over 3,500 peo­ple are in­volved at dif­fer­ent lev­els of SEA ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

Even though the SEA ex­am was post­poned for three weeks from June 10 be­cause of the spike in COVID-19 cas­es – prompt­ing con­cerns by teach­ers who have not yet been vac­ci­nat­ed as to the risk of ex­po­sure – the min­is­ter said 3,535 peo­ple in­volved in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the ex­am have so far been vac­ci­nat­ed.

She said, “The MoE com­plet­ed its vac­ci­na­tion last week as sched­uled. All teach­ers con­firmed at that time to be work­ing for SEA and CXC ex­ams were giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be vac­ci­nat­ed.”

The in­vi­ta­tion to be vac­ci­nat­ed was al­so ex­tend­ed to oth­er cat­e­gories of per­sons which in­clud­ed prin­ci­pals; vice prin­ci­pals; heads of de­part­ments; deans; cler­i­cal staff; health and safe­ty of­fi­cers; and ad­di­tion­al staff who were deemed to be es­sen­tial.

Say­ing “not every­one took up the of­fer,” the min­is­ter added: “If per­sons did not in­di­cate that they are will­ing to vol­un­teer to work for SEA or CXC ex­am ad­min­is­tra­tion at the time of the of­fer, they would not have been in­clud­ed in the count.”

A to­tal 4,125 names were sub­mit­ted to health of­fi­cials by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MoE) – which ex­ceed­ed the as­cribed num­ber of 4,000 vac­cines al­lo­cat­ed by that min­istry

Gads­by-Dol­ly ex­plained this was done to al­low for con­tin­gen­cies and, “If fur­ther dos­es are made avail­able to the MOE, we will en­gage more staff in the ex­er­cise.”

Not both­ered by the lack of vol­un­teers for the SEA ex­am but con­ced­ing that both 2020 and 2021 have been un­usu­al years, she said there is not usu­al­ly a glut of teach­ers vol­un­teer­ing to ad­min­is­ter the SEA.

Ear­li­er this week, the call for vol­un­teers was ex­tend­ed to sec­ondary school teach­ers, as many of those at the pri­ma­ry lev­el had failed to re­spond due to fear of con­tract­ing the virus.

Say­ing yes­ter­day that they on­ly need­ed a small frac­tion of sec­ondary school teach­ers to round out of the fi­nal num­ber, the min­is­ter said, “We ex­pect to meet the tar­gets.”

On the is­sue of whether or not the min­istry will have to con­sid­er of­fer­ing a stipend as they did in 2020 or re­cruit ex­ter­nal in­vig­i­la­tors, she added, “There is no an­tic­i­pa­tion of the need for stipends and ex­ter­nal in­vig­i­la­tors.”

Just af­ter the be­gin­ning of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic in T&T in 2020, Cab­i­net of­fered a stipend to the dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories of in­vig­i­la­tors which in­clud­ed As­sess­ment Su­per­vi­sors who re­ceived $500 per day; As­sis­tant As­sess­ment Su­per­vi­sors who re­ceived $450 per day; and Testers who re­ceived $400 per day.

These per­sons would have re­ceived the pay­ments to off-set the loss of two va­ca­tion days.

So far, a to­tal of 178 re­quests for de­fer­rals have been re­ceived and 160 have been grant­ed.