There are many changes which are be­ing im­ple­ment­ed by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to al­le­vi­ate some of the stress the stu­dents writ­ing the SEA ex­am­i­na­tions ex­pe­ri­ence. One such change is mov­ing the ex­am­i­na­tion from March to May, and the Min­is­ter and his team should be com­mend­ed for this, as it al­lows more time to com­plete the syl­labus, fa­cil­i­tate ad­e­quate prepa­ra­tion, re­vi­sion and prac­tice.

How­ev­er, there is one change I would like to see that would ben­e­fit all stu­dents tremen­dous­ly. The time al­lo­cat­ed for math­e­mat­ics is 75 min­utes to com­plete 46 ques­tions. Based on 2013 SEA Math­e­mat­ics pa­per, al­though there were 46 ques­tions, there were a to­tal of 69 items.

I think the time should be in­creased by 15 min­utes to 90 min­utes. Why? I have seen my son, who is writ­ing SEA this year, strug­gle to com­plete past pa­pers in Math­e­mat­ics with­in 75 min­utes. This leads to ur­gency and anx­i­ety that cause him to make mis­takes and have some ques­tions in­com­plete. When I give ex­tra time, not on­ly does he com­plete the pa­per but he does bet­ter.

In CXC O-lev­el Math­e­mat­ics mul­ti­ple-choice ex­am, the stu­dents are giv­en 60 ques­tions to do in 90 min­utes and SEA stu­dents are giv­en 75 min­utes to com­plete an av­er­age of 69 items, there­fore some­thing is dras­ti­cal­ly wrong. I would like to know what is the NPTA or TTUTA's po­si­tion on this mat­ter.

The ex­tra time would def­i­nite­ly be ben­e­fi­cial to all stu­dents be­cause they would at­tempt the ex­am more con­fi­dent­ly see­ing that they have more time.I know that the Min­is­ter has the au­thor­i­ty to al­ter the ex­am­i­na­tion ex­pe­di­tious­ly and more changes are com­ing in 2015 so I think that he def­i­nite­ly has the pow­er to make this change. In do­ing so he would make many stu­dents, par­ents and teach­ers very hap­py.

Franklyn Kalloo,

Pin­to Road Ari­ma