Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Al­though the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion con­sult­ed with main stake­hold­ers in de­ter­min­ing the Au­gust 20 date for the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA), some of them said yes­ter­day they would have pre­ferred the date ini­tial­ly sug­gest­ed by Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia.

T&T Uni­fied Teacher’s As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent An­to­nia De Fre­itas was one of the first to ad­mit they were still not com­fort­able with the Au­gust date.

“The gen­er­al coun­cil had agreed to pre­vi­ous­ly and re­it­er­at­ed in a meet­ing yes­ter­day that TTUTA would want to stick with the date of SEA be­ing done some­time in Oc­to­ber,” De Fre­itas told Guardian Me­dia in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

“The rea­sons be­ing, when school re­opened in Sep­tem­ber on Sep­tem­ber 1st, you would al­low the stu­dents enough time - four to six weeks af­ter the re­open­ing - to re­turn to the rou­tine, to reac­cli­ma­tise, to deal with any psy­choso­cial is­sues they may have ex­pe­ri­enced and helped to build their con­fi­dence and mo­ti­va­tion.”

She said the ear­li­er date means there is no guar­an­tee that stu­dents would be in a state of readi­ness.

“We are not sure that rush­ing to do these ex­am­i­na­tions in Au­gust and the sec­ondary (CSEC and CAPE ex­ams) in Ju­ly will be in the best in­ter­est of our stu­dents go­ing for­ward,” she said.

She al­so in­di­cat­ed that the gen­er­al coun­cil did not feel that fi­nan­cial in­cen­tives should have been used to mo­ti­vate teach­ers. She said teach­ers would “con­tin­ue to seek the needs of stu­dents as far as they need to it.”

Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry Schools’ Prin­ci­pals As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Lance Mot­t­ley said they al­so pre­ferred the Oc­to­ber date which, he said, they sug­gest­ed to Gar­cia. How­ev­er, he not­ed prin­ci­pals would con­tin­ue to do their du­ty to their as­sist stu­dents through the pe­ri­od.

“Notwith­stand­ing the fact that we had pro­posed an Oc­to­ber date, we will do what is nec­es­sary as prin­ci­pals to one - sup­port our stu­dents who will be do­ing this ex­am on Au­gust 20 as an­nounced by the min­istry and al­so to sup­port our teach­ers who will be in­volved in the prepa­ra­tion of these stu­dents for this ex­am,” Mot­t­ley said.

How­ev­er, Rachiel Ram­samooj, the ad­min­is­tra­tor of the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) Par­ent Sup­port Group on Face­book, which has some 10,000 mem­bers, told Guardian Me­dia in a tele­phone in­ter­view that they were sat­is­fied with the Au­gust 20 date and be­lieve it to be safer.

She said it al­lows the stu­dents to write the ex­am be­fore the re­open­ing of the school term, which would lead to less in­ter­ac­tion with the rest of the school pop­u­la­tion and de­crease the risk of COVID-19 spread if any. She said the an­nounce­ment of the date al­so now gives the stu­dents clar­i­ty and re­lieves them from the stress wait­ing in an­tic­i­pa­tion.

“These chil­dren have not re­al­ly been set­tled since the post­pone­ment of the SEA ... let them get it done so it won’t be hang­ing over their heads you know?” she said.

At­tempts to con­tact Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion St George Re­gion pres­i­dent Zena Ra­matali were un­suc­cess­ful last evening as she did not an­swer her cell­phone.