RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) is link­ing high lev­els of ex­am­i­na­tion ab­sen­teeism among CSEC and CAPE stu­dents to broad­er so­cio-emo­tion­al chal­lenges, warn­ing that the cri­sis is be­ing com­pound­ed by a crip­pled Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion (SSSD).

While con­grat­u­lat­ing stu­dents on their 2026 re­sults and com­mend­ing teach­ers and par­ents, TTUTA pres­i­dent Crys­tal Ashe raised se­ri­ous con­cerns over the re­port­ed no-shows for ex­am­i­na­tions. He as­sert­ed that stu­dent ab­sen­teeism is fre­quent­ly tied to cir­cum­stances re­quir­ing pro­fes­sion­al in­ter­ven­tion, yet the sys­tems de­signed to help them have been se­vere­ly un­der­mined.

Ac­cord­ing to Ashe, the SSSD is cur­rent­ly “se­vere­ly com­pro­mised,” cit­ing the non-re­new­al of con­tracts for crit­i­cal per­son­nel in­clud­ing so­cial work­ers and guid­ance coun­sel­lors, which has left the sup­port sys­tem “al­most non-ex­is­tent in some ar­eas.”

“This is un­ac­cept­able at a time when our stu­dents and fam­i­lies ar­guably need these ser­vices more than ever,” Ashe said.

TTUTA al­so not­ed that the Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (EAP), which pro­vides vi­tal sup­port to ed­u­ca­tors and their fam­i­lies, re­mains in abeyance. The as­so­ci­a­tion is call­ing on the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to im­me­di­ate­ly re­in­state all SSSD per­son­nel and re­store the EAP.

Ad­dress­ing the broad­er pic­ture, Ashe em­pha­sized that stu­dents must be en­cour­aged not just to pre­pare for ex­ams, but to ac­tu­al­ly en­ter the ex­am­i­na­tion room and make the at­tempt.

“Every stu­dent must be en­cour­aged to try,” Ashe said, adding that a fear of fail­ure or feel­ing in­ad­e­quate­ly pre­pared should nev­er stop a stu­dent from demon­strat­ing what they know, pro­vid­ed they have ac­cess to nec­es­sary pro­fes­sion­al sup­port.

At the same time, Ashe re­mind­ed stu­dents that ed­u­ca­tion in­volves per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, in­clud­ing at­tend­ing school, par­tic­i­pat­ing in the learn­ing process, com­plet­ing SBAs, and mak­ing every rea­son­able ef­fort to sit reg­is­tered ex­ams.

Re­it­er­at­ing that ex­am­i­na­tion re­sults do not de­fine a per­son’s en­tire fu­ture, Ashe called for re­newed na­tion­al at­ten­tion on stu­dent prepa­ra­tion, at­ten­dance, parental en­gage­ment, and the ur­gent restora­tion of front­line sup­port ser­vices to en­sure every stu­dent has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to suc­ceed.

Ear­li­er this week, Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Cpun­cil ex­pressed con­cern over ab­sen­teeism across the Caribbean say­ing 35,000 sec­ondary school stu­dents failed to turn up for this year’s CAPE (Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tion) and CSEC (Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate) ex­am­i­na­tions.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath in an ear­li­er in­ter­view said the SSD is un­der re­view be­cause of dis­crep­an­cies.