DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) blames the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic for the Caribbean’s poor per­for­mance in Math­e­mat­ics in this year’s Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) ex­am.

In an in­ter­view on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, be­fore da­ta was re­leased from the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry on T&T’s per­for­mance in CSEC and Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tion (CAPE), TTUTA pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin said oth­er fac­tors may have con­tributed to 64 per cent of the re­gion’s stu­dents fail­ing Math. He cit­ed phys­i­cal con­di­tions, health and safe­ty, as well as vi­o­lence and in­dis­ci­pline, which have neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed both par­ents and teach­ers. He said while the pan­dem­ic is over, its long-term im­pact can­not be ig­nored.

“We have to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion and be cog­nisant that this group of stu­dents would have been at a crit­i­cal time in the lock­down phase, would have been go­ing through COVID and the whole lock­down and the on­line en­gage­ment, which would have been some­thing fair­ly new to most stu­dents. So, the learn­ing loss would have been some­thing that we have to con­sid­er. It would have con­tributed great­ly to the per­for­mance,” Lum Kin said.

He added that a post­mortem is nec­es­sary and ex­pressed con­cern that TTUTA has not been very in­volved in that ex­er­cise spear­head­ed by the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry.

How­ev­er, Lum Kin said an oc­ca­sion­al drop in per­for­mance is not un­usu­al.

“It’s not a mat­ter to pan­ic as well too, be­cause you will get, and the trends have shown, that you will get fluc­tu­a­tions and there are par­tic­u­lar in­stances and fac­tors that may af­fect par­tic­u­lar schools,” he said.

“We are not here to im­pede or to be re­sis­tant to what­ev­er is the pol­i­cy of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and to tak­ing ed­u­ca­tion for­ward and the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor. We are here to as­sist as best as pos­si­ble.”

He agreed ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) and tech­nol­o­gy can be used in a pos­i­tive way to im­prove stu­dents’ per­for­mance, but said re­search must be done to utilise it prop­er­ly.

On the is­sue of cheat­ing, Lum Kin said stu­dents are like­ly tak­ing this route be­cause of a lack of pre­pared­ness. He al­so be­lieves they are falling vic­tim to peer pres­sure and so­ci­ety’s ex­pec­ta­tions.

“There is a moral and eth­i­cal is­sue. We need to al­so have a lev­el of pre­pared­ness and coun­selling be­fore stu­dents go in­to these high-stakes ex­am­i­na­tions. So, from way back in­to SEA, we have to in­cul­cate a cer­tain lev­el of hon­esty and that is with­in so­ci­ety as well. The school can re­in­force it,” he said.

With the new school term set to be­gin on Sep­tem­ber 2, TTUTA ex­pressed con­cerns about in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues.

“We would have some chal­lenges, we wish our ed­u­ca­tors all the best. TTUTA is ready and will­ing and is stand­ing by its ed­u­ca­tors and stu­dents. Mount Hope Sec­ondary, in terms of in­fra­struc­ture, baf­fles the mind and it’s the same with oth­er schools. We wish ed­u­ca­tion pro­fes­sion­als all the best for the up­com­ing aca­d­e­m­ic year and term.”

On Tues­day, when re­sults were re­leased, CXC Di­rec­tor of Op­er­a­tions Dr Nicole Man­ning said ed­u­ca­tors have had two years since the pan­dem­ic to get stu­dents back on track. She said de­spite some poor per­for­mances, grades can im­prove next year.

“You see a lit­tle de­cline? Usu­al­ly, we see a lit­tle pick up af­ter­wards,” she said.