Sto­ries by

Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion An­tho­ny Gar­cia yes­ter­day an­nounced that the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) will take place on Au­gust 20. Fur­ther­more, Stan­dard Five teach­ers who will be called out to pre­pare the stu­dents for this ac­tiv­i­ty, start­ing from Ju­ly 20, will be paid stipends to the tune of some $20.2 mil­lion - which will ef­fec­tive­ly be a va­ca­tion bonus of sorts.

Gar­cia made the an­nounce­ment at yes­ter­day’s Min­istry of Health vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence on COVID-19.

The ex­am, ini­tial­ly card­ed to take place in April, was post­poned due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and an Oc­to­ber date was ini­tial­ly con­sid­ered. How­ev­er, in an­nounc­ing the Au­gust date yes­ter­day, Gar­cia ad­mit­ted the min­istry was ask­ing SEA teach­ers to come out to pre­pare stu­dents dur­ing their va­ca­tion.

“We un­der­stand and we ac­cept the fact that that would be a pe­ri­od when teach­ers would be on va­ca­tion. We want to re­spect the right that our teach­ers are sup­posed to have an op­por­tu­ni­ty of en­joy­ing their va­ca­tion pe­ri­od,” Gar­cia said.

“As a re­sult, we are ask­ing our teach­ers (of Stan­dard Five class­es) to make them­selves avail­able ... so they may im­part that knowl­edge and those teach­ings so that our stu­dents would have an op­por­tu­ni­ty, every op­por­tu­ni­ty, of per­form­ing to the best of their abil­i­ty.”

Bear­ing this in mind, he said Cab­i­net had de­cid­ed to of­fer teach­ers a stipend rang­ing from $400 to $900 per day.

“This is not salary. It is a stipend be­cause dur­ing the va­ca­tion pe­ri­od teach­ers would be get­ting their reg­u­lar salaries,” Gar­cia said.

He said teach­ers will be work­ing nor­mal school hours - 8.30 am to 3 pm - dur­ing the pe­ri­od, which will be 23 days not count­ing the ac­tu­al day of the ex­am (Au­gust 20).

Of the pay­out, some 476 prin­ci­pals will re­ceive the biggest chunk at $900 per day for a to­tal of just over $10.2 mil­lion over a 24-day pe­ri­od. Those in the Teacher I cat­e­go­ry are next with a pay­out of $7.8 mil­lion to 681 teach­ers for a 23-day pe­ri­od. (See ta­ble)

He said the min­istry was now in dis­cus­sions with the Min­istry of Fi­nance to “iden­ti­fy funds that are in our bud­get so that we can have the nec­es­sary pay­ments made.” How­ev­er, he lat­er not­ed that the min­istry had bud­get­ed $20 mil­lion to “make sure our teach­ers are ad­e­quate­ly com­pen­sat­ed.”

Gar­cia ap­pealed to pri­vate schools to fol­low in stride with re­sum­ing class­es for their stu­dents writ­ing the ex­am­i­na­tions, not­ing that Gov­ern­ment would not be able to of­fer a sim­i­lar stipend arrange­ment to those in­sti­tu­tions.

“Pri­vate schools are man­aged by pri­vate or­gan­i­sa­tions or by pri­vate in­di­vid­u­als and I am ap­peal­ing to those or­gan­i­sa­tions and those in­di­vid­u­als to do ex­act­ly what we are do­ing and that is to give our stu­dents a chance at the ex­am and a chance that would al­low them to write the ex­am to the best of their abil­i­ty,” he said.

Gar­cia said of­fi­cers of the Stu­dent Sup­port Di­vi­sion of the min­istry will vis­it schools to pro­vide emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal sup­port where need­ed. School su­per­vi­sors and cur­ricu­lum of­fi­cers have al­so been asked to make “con­stant and reg­u­lar” vis­its to the schools to en­sure the cur­ricu­lum is im­ple­ment­ed.”

Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion by Guardian Me­dia, Gar­cia as­sured that the min­istry will en­sure that all schools are sani­tised and not­ed they were cur­rent­ly in the process of do­ing this.

“In ad­di­tion to this, our stu­dents would be asked to wear masks when they en­ter the schools. We are still at the point where we are dis­cussing with the Min­istry of Health whether the stu­dents would be re­quired to wear a mask when they write the ex­am. So that is yet to be de­ter­mined,” he said.

He al­so in­di­cat­ed that phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing will al­so be main­tained.

“We have had the ad­vice that stu­dents must dis­tance them­selves a min­i­mum of six feet so we would be putting fur­ni­ture, would be arranged in such a way that they main­tain that so­cial dis­tanc­ing,” he added.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence last month when the Ju­ly date for CSEC and CAPE ex­ams were an­nounced, the min­istry per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, Lenor Bap­tiste-Sim­mons, in­di­cat­ed that $6 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed to sani­tise all schools which will be fa­cil­i­tat­ing ex­ams.

The dai­ly stipends be­ing of­fered to teach­ers to pre­pare stu­dents for the SEA ex­am:

Prin­ci­pals- $900

Vice Prin­ci­pals (who teach an SEA class)- $650

As­sis­tant Teach­ers- $400

Teacher 1- $500

Se­nior Teach­ers- $600

Head of De­part­ments- $550