I humbly re­quest, from those with­in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MOE), ed­u­cat­ed in the field of ed­u­ca­tion, to quench my thirst for an­swers re­gard­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Con­tin­u­ous As­sess­ment Com­po­nent.

We are now be­gin­ning the month of Feb­ru­ary, the SEA ex­am is sched­uled for ear­ly May. The MOE, last week, re­leased to the pri­ma­ry schools the third and fi­nal piece of the So­cial Stud­ies com­po­nent to be com­plet­ed by Feb­ru­ary 6.

There is al­so a Dra­ma, Sci­ence and Cre­ative Writ­ing com­po­nent to be com­plet­ed. These com­po­nents re­quire a fair amount of time to be im­ple­ment­ed by the teach­ers be­fore be­ing com­plet­ed by the stu­dents, be­fore the min­istry mon­i­tor comes to as­sess these pieces. These CAC pieces make up 30 per cent of the over­all mark to­wards their SEA score.

My ques­tions: a) giv­en the ad­di­tion­al ar­eas of test­ing im­ple­ment­ed, why was there no re­vi­sion/amend­ment to the cur­rent syl­labus/cur­ricu­lum, which, when stood by it­self was ex­ten­sive, re­quir­ing, if not all, most schools to of­fer dai­ly ex­tra lessons to en­able their stu­dents the best pos­si­ble chance of be­ing award­ed their school of choice?

b) why, at this late stage, is the MOE throw­ing out and gath­er­ing, when this time should sole­ly be for teach­ers full fo­cus and en­er­gy to be di­rect­ed en­tire­ly to the fine tun­ing of their stu­dents in prepa­ra­tion for the SEA ex­am?

c) has the min­istry con­versed, just­ly, with the teach­ers, those on the front line, re­gard­ing their ad­vice, opin­ion or rec­om­men­da­tion on this CAC that was au­tho­rised?

Is there any en­ti­ty out there will­ing to con­duct an im­par­tial sur­vey on the find­ings and opin­ions from the pri­ma­ry schools con­cern­ing the CAC?

R Pol­lon­ais,

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