The Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am has been post­poned from June 10 to Ju­ly 1, 2021.

In an­nounc­ing the change in date dur­ing yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s—Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly con­firmed the an­tic­i­pat­ed de­lay had, “be­come nec­es­sary due to the tra­jec­to­ry of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the en­su­ing chal­lenges posed by the health reg­u­la­tions at this time.”

Pri­or to the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MOE) wrote to the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil (CXC) on April 23, to alert them as to a pos­si­ble date shift fol­low­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s uptick in dai­ly COVID-19 pos­i­tive cas­es.

She ex­plained that giv­en the record num­bers this past week, “It is with great re­gret that we have to push it back. That was not the in­ten­tion, we did not want to push it back but this is where we are. These are the cards that we have been dealt and we have to play them that way.”

And work­ing with the new date of Ju­ly 1 for the ex­am to be ad­min­is­tered, Gads­by-Dol­ly said the re­sults for the SEA ought to be re­leased by the sec­ond week in Sep­tem­ber to fa­cil­i­tate the place­ment of stu­dents in­to sec­ondary schools by the fol­low­ing week.

Fol­low­ing a stake­hold­er meet­ing on April 22 dur­ing which safe­ty con­cerns of face-to-face in­ter­ac­tions were raised—giv­en the num­bers of new in­fec­tions be­ing record­ed dai­ly which stood then at 81—Gads­by-Dol­ly said a de­ci­sion was tak­en to leave the ex­am as sched­uled for June 10 in def­er­ence to the stu­dents who had been work­ing dili­gent­ly to pre­pare de­spite the chal­lenges of the past 14 months.

A re­view on April 28 showed new in­fec­tions per day had bal­looned from 81 to 223; with an even more rapid in­crease in the vi­ral spread in re­cent days—the Min­is­ter is hop­ing the ro­bust mea­sures that have been put in place since May 15 will yield pos­i­tive re­sults in the com­ing weeks.

She as­sured the MOE’s pri­or­i­ty is to en­sure the safe­ty and health of both teach­ers and stu­dents.

“While the ex­am­i­na­tions are im­por­tant and all prepa­ra­tions are be­ing made for their safe con­duct, they are not more im­por­tant than the health of the pop­u­la­tion and the lat­ter will not be sac­ri­ficed for the sake of the for­mer,” the Min­is­ter said.

Re­fer­ring to stake­hold­er feed­back dur­ing con­sul­ta­tions in April which had of­fered up an al­ter­na­tive date of Ju­ly 1, Gads­by-Dol­ly is hope­ful the six-week post­pone­ment would be enough “time for the rate of in­fec­tions and ac­tive cas­es to be re­duced to a lev­el deemed rea­son­ably safe for the con­duct of the ex­am­i­na­tion.”

Gads­by-Dol­ly said the vac­ci­na­tion of ed­u­ca­tors would now be a pri­or­i­ty fo­cus for the Min­istry of Health (MOH), “Teach­ers who are and will be in clos­est or re­peat­ed phys­i­cal con­tact with stu­dents have been tar­get­ed as a pri­or­i­ty group, and the MOH will ac­com­mo­date this sub-set of teach­ers for pri­or­i­ty vac­ci­na­tion.”

CXC con­sid­ers post­pone­ment

of CSEC/CAPE ex­ams

Re­spond­ing to queries re­gard­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) and the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am (CAPE) which are due to get start­ed by June 1, Gads­by-Dol­ly said CXC had writ­ten to var­i­ous is­land ter­ri­to­ries ear­li­er this week ex­press­ing “their views on pos­si­ble post­pone­ment and some oth­er rec­om­men­da­tions that have been for­ward­ed, no­tably from the Caribbean Union of Teach­ers (CUT) and the dif­fer­ent Mem­ber States of Cari­com.”

The Caribbean Union of Teach­ers (CUT) is a fed­er­a­tion of teach­ing trade unions in the Caribbean.

Ad­mit­ting this coun­try’s po­si­tion had been sig­nalled to CXC “based on our cir­cum­stances at this time,” the Min­is­ter said, “We would be in sup­port of a post­pone­ment, not more than three weeks.”

She said there were is­sues re­lat­ing to stu­dents in the St Vin­cent and the Grenadines where the erup­tion of the La Soufriere vol­cano had in­ter­rupt­ed school­ing across the is­land, which re­quired a clos­er look at the ex­am set up.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said, “All of the Mem­bers States have been asked to sub­mit their views by to­day (yes­ter­day), based on the rec­om­men­da­tions of CXC and T&T would have done so to­day (yes­ter­day).”

Mean­while, fol­low­ing dis­cus­sions with lo­cal of­fi­cials as to how lan­guage orals would be con­duct­ed, she said it can be done vir­tu­al­ly us­ing tech­nol­o­gy to as­sure the safe­ty and health of both the teacher and stu­dent so they will not be re­quired to be in the same space.

SEA, CXC de­fer­rals re­quest­ed

The Min­is­ter al­so re­vealed yes­ter­day that her Min­istry has so far re­ceived 402 re­quests for de­fer­rals from CXC can­di­dates.

She ex­plained this com­prised of 201 from pub­lic sec­ondary schools; 182 pri­vate can­di­dates; and 26 from pri­vate reg­is­tered schools.

Re­gard­ing the SEA ex­am, Min­is­ter Gads­by-Dol­ly said of the 19,829 stu­dents reg­is­tered to write the ex­am, 178 de­fer­ral re­quests had been re­ceived from 88 pri­ma­ry schools.

In­di­cat­ing the op­tion of de­fer­ral was re­al­ly meant to of­fer the most vul­ner­a­ble SEA stu­dents who need it, the min­is­ter said it would have to be rec­om­mend­ed by the school prin­ci­pal.

Re­gard­ing the op­tion of de­fer­ral to sec­ondary school stu­dents, Gads­by-Dol­ly said in this case it is not the prin­ci­pal who makes the de­ter­mi­na­tion on if they can de­fer, but rather CXC.

How­ev­er, prin­ci­pals must in­di­cate if the stu­dents can be ac­com­mo­dat­ed in the next year’s class and based on lo­gis­tics, space, and the stu­dent’s per­for­mance, a de­ci­sion will be made.

For stu­dents who are de­fer­ring and can­not or do not want to re­turn to the school, she said mea­sures are be­ing put in place to set up a vir­tu­al learn­ing school with­in the MOE.