An­na-Lisa Paul

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia says he is not both­ered by threats from ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers who have in­di­cat­ed their will­ing­ness to seek le­gal as­sis­tance to stop the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the CSEC and CAPE ex­ams from pro­ceed­ing as planned in Ju­ly.

On Tues­day, both the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) and the Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) called for the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to post­pone/sus­pend the ex­ams.

NPTA's act­ing pres­i­dent Clarence Men­doza in­di­cat­ed they were par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned about the psy­cho­log­i­cal health of the stu­dents who would be writ­ing the Caribbean Sec­ondary En­trance Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) and the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tions (CAPE) as they had been silent­ly suf­fer­ing.

TTUTA and NPTA agreed that more time was need­ed for stu­dents to com­plete the School-Based As­sess­ments (SBA's) and In­ter­nal As­sess­ments (IA's) - which are to be used by the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil (CXC) to de­ter­mine the stu­dent's fi­nal grade.

Re­spond­ing yes­ter­day dur­ing a brief tele­phone in­ter­view, Gar­cia said, "Any de­ci­sion to change the date of the ex­ams, could on­ly be tak­en af­ter thor­ough con­sul­ta­tion among all par­tic­i­pat­ing gov­ern­ments of the re­gion."

Gar­cia said the an­nounce­ment on May 8 by the Coun­cil for Hu­man and So­cial De­vel­op­ment (COHSOD) to sup­port CXC in its' de­ci­sion to ad­min­is­ter the ex­ams in Ju­ly, "Could on­ly be changed if a meet­ing is called by COHSOD and Cari­com, and un­til that hap­pens, we are bound by the de­ci­sion be­cause that is the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process and we have to abide by that."

Re­fer­ring to the threat of le­gal ac­tion by Men­doza on be­half of par­ents, Gar­cia said, "It is strict­ly with­in his rights as a pri­vate cit­i­zen of T&T."

"The Con­sti­tu­tion of T&T guar­an­tees cer­tain fun­da­men­tal rights to cit­i­zens of this coun­try."

Gar­cia once again ex­tend­ed an in­vi­ta­tion to all ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers to dis­cuss is­sues af­fect­ing the na­tion's stu­dents as he said, "Our doors are al­ways open and we are al­ways will­ing to en­gage in con­sul­ta­tion with all stake­hold­ers, and the views ex­pressed by them will al­ways be giv­en con­sid­er­a­tion be­cause we recog­nise that if ed­u­ca­tion is to move for­ward, we need the ac­tive in­volve­ment of all our stake­hold­ers."

In a re­lease on May 18, the Caribbean Union of Teach­ers (CUT) said it was deeply con­cerned about the de­ci­sion tak­en by COHSOD - which was con­trary to the rec­om­mend­ed po­si­tion of the CUT for the sit­ting to be held in Sep­tem­ber.

The re­lease which was signed by CUT's Pres­i­dent Garth An­der­son, stat­ed, "The CUT be­lieves that this un­for­tu­nate de­ci­sion places the lives of thou­sands of stu­dents and teach­ers at risk, as all the is­sues sur­round­ing the ad­min­is­ter­ing of the ex­am­i­na­tions have not been ad­dressed."

An­der­son re­vealed that in a let­ter from the CUT to the Reg­is­trar of CXC on April 16, they in­formed the ex­am­i­na­tion coun­cil that they had en­gaged mem­ber units and found them to be, "ve­he­ment­ly op­posed to the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the CXC Ex­am­i­na­tions any time be­fore Sep­tem­ber 2020."

The let­ter out­lined sev­er­al con­cerns in­clud­ing health and safe­ty is­sues, the need for greater en­gage­ment on the for­mat of the ex­am­i­na­tion; the va­lid­i­ty is­sues as­so­ci­at­ed with the pro­posed for­mat of the ex­am­i­na­tion; the tech­no­log­i­cal ca­pac­i­ty and in­fra­struc­tur­al lim­i­ta­tions of ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions through­out the re­gion; the time that is re­quired to pro­vide psy­cho­log­i­cal sup­port; and the un­cer­tain­ty as it re­lates to COVID-19 in the re­gion.

The CUT said, "In or­der to ad­min­is­ter the ex­am­i­na­tion, it is an­tic­i­pat­ed that ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions will be re­opened. We are not con­fi­dent that the gov­ern­ments of the re­gion have demon­strat­ed the lev­el of pre­pared­ness for the planned re­open­ing of schools in or­der to cre­ate a safe en­vi­ron­ment for stu­dents and teach­ers to ef­fec­tive­ly op­er­ate."

"We are aware that there are gov­ern­ments in the re­gion who have re­opened schools and some will in short or­der. We con­sid­er such a move to be reck­less un­less the req­ui­site health pro­vi­sions have been made. We must un­der­stand that teach­ing and learn­ing must take place in an en­vi­ron­ment that is con­ducive for such ac­tiv­i­ties. The health and well-be­ing of stu­dents and teach­ers must take prece­dence over all oth­er con­sid­er­a­tion at this time."

An­der­son went on, "If noth­ing else, the cri­sis of COVID-19 has clear­ly iden­ti­fied glar­ing in­ad­e­qua­cies, co mor­bidi­ties if you will, in the re­gion’s ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tem and their abil­i­ty to ab­sorb pan­dem­ic shock."

The CUT head con­clud­ed by stat­ing, "We are there­fore call­ing on the gov­ern­ments of the re­gion to be

mind­ful not to rush the process for the re­open­ing of schools to fa­cil­i­tate the writ­ing of CXC Ex­am­i­na­tions, un­less they have in­sti­tut­ed all mea­sures out­lined by the re­open­ing of school pro­to­col."