Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

TTUTA To­ba­go of­fi­cer, Bradon Roberts ex­pressed con­cern yes­ter­day that PNM To­ba­go West can­di­date Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis chose to make pub­lic an is­sue raised by some par­ents about clocks to be­gin the SEA ex­am.

He said con­cerns about one miss­ing clock could have been qui­et­ly re­solved with­out caus­ing pan­ic among par­ents and stu­dents as the is­sue was not ma­jor and did not af­fect the ex­am.

“I think we need to be re­spon­si­ble when we have is­sues with chil­dren be­cause we don’t want to cre­ate pan­ic sit­u­a­tions. When things hap­pen, it’s to get them re­solved,” Roberts said.

He added that while TTUTA takes all re­ports se­ri­ous­ly, rais­ing the al­le­ga­tion on so­cial me­dia be­fore try­ing to re­solve it with the au­thor­i­ties was not the best ap­proach, es­pe­cial­ly on ex­am day. He called for bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion to avoid adding to the stress stu­dents al­ready face.

In a live so­cial me­dia video, Cud­joe-Lewis said par­ents con­tact­ed her in dis­tress, claim­ing chil­dren with spe­cial con­ces­sions could not start the ex­am be­cause of the ab­sence of clocks.

“I want to bring to the at­ten­tion of con­stituents and more so, the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion in To­ba­go a very, very se­ri­ous con­cern,” Cud­joe said.

“This morn­ing, I’m be­ing called by par­ents who are an­noyed. This morn­ing is SEA in To­ba­go, and chil­dren are be­ing told, no clocks, no ex­am. Par­ents are be­ing told, no clocks, no ex­am.”

She added: “Chil­dren on con­ces­sion … be­cause their par­ents would have got­ten ap­proval to al­low them to be test­ed sep­a­rate­ly and un­der spe­cial con­di­tions, to­day in To­ba­go we have the prob­lem of par­ents show­ing up with their chil­dren to set­tle them in for ex­ams and they don’t have enough clocks.”

The Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search, and Tech­nol­o­gy dis­missed the claims say­ing that all 40 ex­am cen­tres were ful­ly equipped and the ex­ams start­ed on time.

The Di­vi­sion added every trained in­vig­i­la­tor had a time­keep­ing de­vice, all can­di­dates, in­clud­ing the 29 ap­proved for spe­cial con­di­tions, start­ed the ex­am on sched­ule and all spe­cial ac­com­mo­da­tions were han­dled with care.

Af­ter the ex­am, many stu­dents said the Math­e­mat­ics pa­per was chal­leng­ing.

A par­ent said: “I feel very re­lieved, ex­treme­ly re­lieved. A lot of work went in­to it, a mas­sive amount of work went in­to it.”

In To­ba­go, 1,006 stu­dents from 39 pri­ma­ry schools wrote the ex­am at 40 cen­tres.