An­na-Lisa Paul

De­spite con­cerns over the lo­calised spread of COVID-19 across in T&T, the date for this year’s resched­uled Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am will re­main Au­gust 20.

Fol­low­ing a vir­tu­al meet­ing with stake­hold­ers yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MOE) stuck with the date. Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia said the de­ci­sion was agreed by all stake­hold­ers to be in the best in­ter­est of stu­dents.

“We re­main com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing an en­vi­ron­ment that is safe for learn­ing and teach­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing this time, while all schools con­tin­ue to ob­serve the pro­to­cols aligned to the Min­istry of Health’s COVID-19 guide­lines,” Gar­cia said.

“We will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor this ever-chang­ing sit­u­a­tion and if need­ed, aug­ment and ad­just for the ben­e­fit of all with­in the school com­mu­ni­ty.”

Yes­ter­day’s dis­cus­sions con­sid­ered mov­ing the SEA date for­ward but this was axed af­ter min­istry of­fi­cials not­ed the lo­gis­ti­cal chal­lenges. They ar­gued that giv­en the lim­it­ed time frame in which to re­quest de­fer­rals from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty for the CXC testers, as well as the manda­to­ry 14-day quar­an­tine up­on their ar­rival here, it was not fea­si­ble.

Con­cern­ing the con­tin­u­a­tion of phys­i­cal class­es in the lead-up to the ex­am, there were di­ver­gent views among stake­hold­ers. Some ex­pressed con­cerns for the health and safe­ty of stu­dents and want­ed schools to be closed again, while oth­ers want­ed schools to re­main open to mit­i­gate any fur­ther psy­cho­log­i­cal im­pact on the stu­dents.

TTUTA pres­i­dent An­to­nia Tekah-De Fre­itas said while they re­quest­ed a lat­er date for the ex­am due to health and safe­ty con­cerns, the min­istry held fast to the Au­gust date.

How­ev­er, she said, “We are ask­ing that con­sid­er­a­tion be giv­en to leav­ing the stu­dents home and sus­pend­ing the (cur­rent) pop­u­la­tion class­es be­cause of the spread of the cas­es and util­is­ing ex­ter­nal in­vig­i­la­tors who are not teach­ers to su­per­vise the stu­dents.”

Na­tion­al Coun­cil Par­ents/Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion PRO Shami­la Ra­heem raised con­cerns re­lat­ing to the clo­sure of the Mar­aval RC and Tacarigua Pres­by­ter­ian due to the lo­calised spread of the virus.

“We main­tain the fact that SEA could re­main on Au­gust 20. If it could have been brought for­ward, we would have been hap­py but the Min­is­ter ad­vised us in terms of hav­ing for­eign in­ter­ven­tions for su­per­vi­sion and the need for the quar­an­tine process so we had to kind of set­tle for Au­gust 20,” Ra­heem said.

Re­gard­ing the clo­sure of schools, she said that de­ci­sion was still pend­ing. She said de­spite the out­comes from yes­ter­day’s meet­ing, they were “con­cerned about schools still be­ing open, chil­dren be­ing at risk be­cause of the fact that we have com­mu­ni­ty spread.”

Ra­heem said while the orig­i­nal post­pone­ment from April 2 was no fault of any­one, a sec­ond such move would put stu­dents in a frus­trat­ing po­si­tion.

De­spite this, Ra­heem said, “I would like to see schools closed be­cause we deal with the teach­ers, we deal with the par­ents, we deal with the prin­ci­pals, we rep­re­sent them and their con­cerns are that the schools be closed.”

Rachiel Ram­samooj, the ad­min­is­tra­tor of the SEA Par­ent Sup­port Group on Face­book, which has over 10,000 mem­bers, said some par­ents were an­tic­i­pat­ing an ear­li­er date in light of the cur­rent COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion. Ad­mit­ting some chil­dren had been at home since March who did not have any teach­ing and learn­ing con­tact and would be at a dis­ad­van­tage, she said the Au­gust 20 de­ci­sion was fair and would ben­e­fit all stu­dents.

Re­gard­ing the pro­pos­al to sus­pend phys­i­cal class­es ahead of the ex­am, Ram­samooj said, “I don’t know if that may be the wis­est thing to do. Maybe they should have ac­tu­al­ly re­duced the num­ber of con­tact hours dur­ing each day or lim­it the num­ber of days the stu­dents are ex­posed to each oth­er at the school com­pound.”

Pressed to give the feed­back of her mem­bers on send­ing their chil­dren to school, Ram­samooj re­vealed, “A lot of par­ents have al­ready start­ed keep­ing them at home and maybe send­ing them out in­ter­mit­tent­ly or just for the week­ly mock ex­ams which are ad­min­is­tered in most schools. But some par­ents are re­al­ly hop­ing for the date to be brought up so they wouldn’t have to keep their chil­dren away but I think it’s re­al­ly a per­son­al de­ci­sion now but we will have to wait and see.”

The MOE has agreed to as­sess the sit­u­a­tion for the re­main­der of this week be­fore an­nounc­ing a de­ci­sion ear­ly next week.

Stake­hold­ers who par­tic­i­pat­ed in yes­ter­day’s meet­ing in­clud­ed: T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA); Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry Schools Prin­ci­pals As­so­ci­a­tion (NAPSPA); Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA); As­so­ci­a­tion of De­nom­i­na­tion­al Boards; Pri­vate Pri­ma­ry Schools Prin­ci­pals As­so­ci­a­tion (PPSPA); As­so­ci­a­tion of Prin­ci­pals of As­sist­ed Sec­ondary Schools (APASS); As­so­ci­a­tion of Prin­ci­pals of Pub­lic Sec­ondary Schools (APPSS); Na­tion­al Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on Ed­u­ca­tion and the Pri­vate Spe­cial Schools As­so­ci­a­tion (PSSATT).