Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

There are mixed views among some fol­low­ing the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s de­ci­sion to go ahead with the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) on Thurs­day, but for the most part par­ents of stu­dents ac­tu­al­ly sit­ting the ex­am are sat­is­fied with the de­ci­sion.

While lament­ing that schools may not be able to re­open again this year due to re­cent de­vel­op­ments with the COVID-19 virus lo­cal­ly on Sat­ur­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley con­firmed the resched­uled ex­am is still on.

The ex­am­i­na­tion, ini­tial­ly card­ed for April, had to be post­poned in light of the pan­dem­ic and it was even­tu­al­ly de­cid­ed it would take place on Au­gust 20. Stu­dents were ini­tial­ly asked to re­turn for prepa­ra­tion class­es a month be­fore the ex­am­i­na­tion but that plan was shelved short­ly af­ter the virus af­fect­ed some stu­dents ei­ther di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly and forced the clo­sure of over a dozen schools en­gaged in that ex­er­cise.

Yes­ter­day, Rachiel Ram­samooj, ad­min­is­tra­tor of the SEA Par­ent Sup­port Group on Face­book, told Guardian Me­dia, they were hap­py the ex­am was not moved again.

“We’re not on­ly con­sid­er­ing the safe­ty of the stu­dents but al­so the men­tal health as­pect of the stu­dents,” Ram­samooj said.

“If we have to post­pone this ex­am once again, it would re­al­ly dev­as­tate the chil­dren be­cause they have been prepar­ing for this con­tin­u­ous­ly since March and we have been as­sured, based on feed­back from our schools, that the sani­ti­sa­tion process has been com­plet­ed, in some schools (it) is still on­go­ing and the pro­to­cols would be in place on the ex­am day it­self.”

Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry Schools Prin­ci­pals’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Lance Mot­t­ley is al­so pleased the ex­am­i­na­tion was not can­celled. The as­so­ci­a­tion has al­ways main­tained the ex­am­i­na­tion should still be car­ried out once it is done safe­ly. Re­cent spikes in COVID-19 cas­es, how­ev­er, had caused him to ques­tion if cur­rent health pro­to­cols are suf­fi­cient. In light of this, a meet­ing was called last night with NAPSPA’s ex­ec­u­tive where con­cerns were to be ven­til­lat­ed. Any con­cerns or rec­om­men­da­tions, Mot­t­ley said, will be raised with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion be­fore the ex­am­i­na­tion.

But the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of Par­ent Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tions (NPTA) still holds the view that the lat­est de­vel­op­ments pose too much of a threat to the safe­ty of stu­dents to al­low the ex­am­i­na­tion to con­tin­ue.

“Our or­gan­i­sa­tion is pleased that there would not be any school un­til the end of the year but the (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tion still con­tin­ues and I don’t un­der­stand why so much im­por­tance is placed on just an ex­am­i­na­tion, es­pe­cial­ly with the rise of COVID,” NPTA pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Shamil­la Ra­heem said.

How­ev­er, she not­ed the as­so­ci­a­tion will be more open to the ex­am­i­na­tion if 100 per cent as­sur­ance is giv­en that stu­dents and teach­ers will be safe.