BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

The date of the 2021 Sec­ondary As­sess­ment Ex­am­i­na­tion (SEA) will re­main June 10 but there is con­sid­er­a­tion for a post­pone­ment de­pend­ing on the spread of COVID-19.

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said yes­ter­day there would be no can­cel­la­tion of the ex­am nor any al­ter­na­tive as­sess­ment for place­ment of any kind at this time, as re­quest­ed by the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of Par­ent Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion’s (NCP­TA).

She told Guardian Me­dia, “The an­swer is no to both at this time. We spoke with a wide ar­ray of ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers last Thurs­day and this is not the opin­ion of the ma­jor­i­ty. The view as com­mu­ni­cat­ed is sin­gu­lar to the NCP­TA.”

Gads­by-Dol­ly said the min­istry was cog­nizant of the fact that there were mixed views about post­pon­ing SEA. How­ev­er, she not­ed, the in­ten­tion was not to pro­long the agony for stu­dents, par­ents and teach­ers, but to en­sure that all stu­dents, in­clud­ing the most vul­ner­a­ble, got the best chance at suc­cess.

On Mon­day, NCP­TA pres­i­dent Clarence Men­doza told Guardian Me­dia it was out of the con­cern for 2021 SEA stu­dents hav­ing had no phys­i­cal class­room con­tact hours since last year due to COVID-19, that they were call­ing for the can­cel­la­tion.

Since there will be no can­cel­la­tion, Guardian Me­dia asked Gads­by-Dol­ly if the min­istry had de­cid­ed on a pos­si­ble post­pone­ment date for the ex­am. She said this would de­pend on COVID-19 num­bers and the Min­istry of Health’s ad­vice.

“The ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers, with whom we met last week are of the view that the best sce­nario in­volves the stu­dents get­ting at least three weeks of face-to-face prepa­ra­tion for the ex­am. With cur­rent re­stric­tions on­go­ing un­til May 16, the ear­li­est pos­si­ble time for phys­i­cal SEA class­es to be­gin in some form would be May 17; and this, of course, is not cer­tain un­less the sit­u­a­tion is deemed safe enough.”

Gads­by-Dol­ly said mov­ing the ex­am to a pos­si­ble date of Ju­ly 1 would al­low more time for the num­bers to sta­bilise and may give stu­dents the best chance for some face-to-face prepa­ra­tion time.

But she not­ed it was the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil (CXC) that was re­spon­si­ble for ad­min­is­ter­ing SEA and if any date changes or al­ter­nate arrange­ments were to be made, they would have to be made with CXC soon, as the cur­rent sched­ule was based on a June 10 date.

She said the min­istry planned on meet­ing with the Health Min­istry this week to dis­cuss the way for­ward.

“Any con­sid­er­a­tion of post­pone­ment will be based on the stu­dents pos­si­bly get­ting some face-to-face time, as ad­vised by the stake­hold­ers. The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion will con­fer with the Min­istry of Health on the mat­ter lat­er this week, giv­ing the re­stric­tions some time to take ef­fect and make a rec­om­men­da­tion to the Cab­i­net there­after, bear­ing in mind all view­points.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to for­mer T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Lyns­ley Doo­d­hai, for his view on the NCP­TA’s call. He said there was just not enough time to try a new method to re­place the 2021 SEA ex­am.

“It will be im­prac­ti­cal to can­cel the ex­am­i­na­tion be­cause you would need some mech­a­nism to place stu­dents in the sec­ondary school,” said Doo­d­hai.

Doo­d­hai, who has been an ed­u­ca­tor for 35 years and is the cur­rent prin­ci­pal of the Tor­rib Trace Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School in New Grant, Princes Town, agreed it was time for a new form of as­sess­ment to be ex­plored but said an ex­per­i­ment this late would be counter-pro­duc­tive.

“I agree it is time for some­thing new, but not for 2021 be­cause I don’t think time will al­low us. We’re just a very short time away from the ex­am­i­na­tion in June. So…for 2021 no. We will have to have the ex­am to have these chil­dren placed in a sec­ondary school. But go­ing for­ward, it is some­thing we will have to con­sid­er whether the SEA ex­am­i­na­tion is not sat­is­fy­ing con­cern­ing place­ment of chil­dren in sec­ondary schools.”

Doo­d­hai, al­so the ex-head of the Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry Schools Prin­ci­pals’ As­so­ci­a­tion (NAPSPA), said if a lev­elled play­ing field ex­ist­ed in terms of the sec­ondary schools, there would be no need for an ex­am but that was not the case.

“Many par­ents want their chil­dren to at­tend cer­tain schools, right. The ex­am­i­na­tion is used as a place­ment ex­am­i­na­tion. Go­ing for­ward post-2021, the de­ci­sion would have to be made whether the SEA should be main­tained or not,” he said.

On NCP­TA’s sug­ges­tion of abol­ish­ing the ex­am al­to­geth­er, he said the view was not spe­cif­ic to NCP­TA and was noth­ing new.

“Many, many years ago, al­most 15 to 20 years ago, the min­istry had start­ed some­thing called the Con­tin­u­ous As­sess­ment Pro­gramme (CAP) and un­der that par­tic­u­lar pro­gramme, it was en­vis­aged that chil­dren would be as­sessed at var­i­ous points dur­ing their pri­ma­ry school life so that at the end of their pri­ma­ry school, those as­sess­ments would be cor­re­lat­ed for place­ment at sec­ondary school, but some­where along the line that CAP fell off,” he said.