The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is giv­ing par­ents of stu­dents set to write the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tion on June 10, the op­tion to de­fer and in­stead have their chil­dren sit the ex­am in 2022 in­stead.

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia late yes­ter­day evening that a memo cir­cu­lat­ed to school su­per­vi­sor and prin­ci­pals stat­ing the op­tion was le­git­i­mate.

Ac­cord­ing to the two-page memo from the Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, “The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is cog­nizant of the chal­lenges ex­pe­ri­enced by stu­dents prepar­ing to sit the SEA 2021, and hav­ing con­sult­ed with key Ed­u­ca­tion­al Stake­hold­ers, has de­cid­ed to of­fer the op­tion to ap­ply for a de­fer­ral of the sit­ting of the SEA from 2021 to 2022.”

The memo stat­ed that par­ents must sub­mit a writ­ten re­quest to the prin­ci­pal of the school stat­ing the rea­son for the re­quest for de­fer­ral. If it based on med­ical rea­sons, sup­port­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion must ac­com­pa­ny the re­quest.

The re­quests will be re­viewed by class teach­ers along with prin­ci­pals who have been asked to con­sid­er project class size in 2022 when de­ter­min­ing the re­quests.

Prin­ci­pals are asked to sub­mit the num­ber of re­quests for de­fer­rals to the dis­trict of­fice by May 17, fol­low­ing which school su­per­vi­sors would be col­lat­ing the in­for­ma­tion which would be sent to the Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer by May 21.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, ac­cord­ing to the memo, will al­so be al­low­ing stu­dents from In­fant 1 to Stan­dard 4, who have been af­fect­ed aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly by the clo­sure of in-per­son class­es, to re­peat their present class lev­el in the 2021 to 2022 aca­d­e­m­ic year, af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with par­ents and guardians.