Akash Sama­roo

While the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s Cy­ber Crime and So­cial Me­dia Unit is in­ves­ti­gat­ing a pur­port­ed leak of the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly says the in­tegri­ty of the ex­am­i­na­tion has not been com­pro­mised.

The leak ap­peared on so­cial me­dia but Gads­by-Dol­ly said it hap­pened while pupils were sit­ting the ex­am and there­fore they would not have been able to ben­e­fit from it.

“So­cial Me­dia posts, which pur­port to have re­leased the con­fi­den­tial SEA 2023 ex­am­i­na­tion pa­pers, would not have been ac­ces­si­ble to stu­dents writ­ing the SEA, as they were al­ready en­gaged in the ex­am­i­na­tion process, and based on the rules en­forced by As­sess­ment Su­per­vi­sors and Cen­tre Man­agers, would have had no ac­cess to their phones. There­fore, the in­tegri­ty of the SEA 2023 has not been com­pro­mised,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

The min­is­ter added that giv­en the chain of cus­tody of the ex­am pa­pers, it nar­rows down where the leak em­anat­ed from.

“It is like­ly that this post em­anat­ed from the lim­it­ed cat­e­go­ry of per­son­nel ex­posed to ex­am­i­na­tion pa­pers on the open­ing of the se­cure pack­ages, which could on­ly have tak­en place up­on their un­seal­ing on the day of the ex­am­i­na­tion. If this is in­deed so, it is high­ly re­gret­table. The Cy­ber Crime De­part­ment of the TTPS has been en­gaged to as­sist in the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the source of the ini­tial post,” the min­is­ter said.

Mean­while, the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion al­so said a re­port re­view­ing the SEA ex­am­i­na­tions is be­fore the Cab­i­net.

“The SEA has been the sub­ject of at least three con­sul­ta­tions in the re­cent past, two be­ing with­in my tenure. Based on all the con­tri­bu­tions gar­nered from a wide se­lec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion, there is no con­sen­sus on its abol­ish­ment. The PM ap­point­ed a com­mit­tee to re­view the SEA in 2021, and their re­port is be­fore the Cab­i­net at this time,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

The com­mit­tee’s man­date is to re­view and rec­om­mend changes to the con­duct of the SEA and tran­si­tion to sec­ondary school, as well as the Con­cor­dat, af­ter re­view of the rel­e­vant Con­sul­ta­tion Re­ports gen­er­at­ed by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and fur­ther con­sul­ta­tion which the com­mit­tee may deem nec­es­sary.

Gads­by-Dol­ly added that dis­cus­sions are on­go­ing.

The min­is­ter was re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia af­ter par­ents of pupils who took the SEA ex­am yes­ter­day ex­pressed their frus­tra­tions with the pres­sure the cur­rent ex­er­cise puts on both par­ent and child.

“This is the most dif­fi­cult point in a per­son’s life be­cause these chil­dren be­lieve this ex­am makes or breaks you,” said Sarah Choon out­side the Vista­bel­la Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School yes­ter­day.

Over in To­ba­go at the TIA In­ter­na­tion­al Acad­e­my, An­drew Aguillera, said, “I be­lieve there is a lot of stress on these chil­dren. I think it’s too young of an age to be stressed out that much.”

Sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments were shared in Ch­agua­nas, where Akash Ram­roop took his daugh­ter, An­jali, to Star­bucks to cel­e­brate the com­ple­tion of her ex­ams.

“It’s stress for both par­ents and the kids, a lot of strain in terms of the cur­ricu­lum as well, it’s very hard, from my day to her day, it’s very dif­fer­ent and there’s a lot of stress on these stu­dents com­pared to me when I wrote SEA.”

Even To­ba­go Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris, whose daugh­ter wrote SEA yes­ter­day, had some reser­va­tions about the ex­am.

“I would not want to go through this feel­ing again, so hope­ful­ly, I know we are look­ing at how we can com­pre­hen­sive­ly ad­dress the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and I hope the SEA is part of that re­view, where some­thing less stress­ful and a more con­tin­u­ous based as­sess­ment can be done so our chil­dren don’t have to go through this kind of trau­ma and this kind of stress.”

That’s ex­act­ly what for­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter, Dr Tim Gopeesingh, is sug­gest­ing to the Gov­ern­ment.

In 2011, Gopeesingh in­tro­duced the Con­tin­u­ous As­sess­ment Com­po­nent (CAC), which saw pupils eval­u­at­ed on their aca­d­e­m­ic process in the years lead­ing up to Stan­dard 5. This as­sess­ment ac­count­ed for 30% of their fi­nal mark, leav­ing the SEA ex­am day with a weight of 70%.”

Gopeesingh yes­ter­day said by eval­u­at­ing the pupils over the years, it would help ed­u­ca­tors to iden­ti­fy strug­gling chil­dren at an ear­ly phase, which leaves time for im­prove­ment.

“We in­tro­duced it, we had a suc­cess­ful im­ple­men­ta­tion for two years, this was rec­om­mend­ed by more than 4,000 ed­u­ca­tors very ear­ly on in our term and it had proven to be very suc­cess­ful. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the Gov­ern­ment of Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley, they moved the ex­ams from May back to March and they scrapped the CAC, and that in­clud­ed morals, val­ues, ethics, cit­i­zen­ry de­vel­op­ment, char­ac­ter de­vel­op­ment, Agri Sci­ence, mu­sic, dance and dra­ma so the stu­dent re­ceived an all-round ed­u­ca­tion equip­ping them ful­ly for CSEC in Forms 1 to 5.”

He said the one “do or die” SEA ex­am is un­suit­able for pupils.

“This is why we had a high fail­ure rate in the last sev­en years. When we came in, 14% of stu­dents were get­ting 30% or less, when we left, less than 1% were get­ting 30% or less.”