The T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) Pres­i­dent An­to­nia Tekah-De Fre­itas be­lieves that not all stu­dents were able to cope with the on­line learn­ing dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and this im­pact­ed neg­a­tive­ly the re­sults of the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) re­sults.

The SEA re­sults which were re­leased on Fri­day showed that on­ly 37 per cent of stu­dents scored more than 50 per cent.

“As ed­u­ca­tors, we are aware that all stu­dents learn dif­fer­ent­ly. So while some stu­dents flour­ished in the on­line modal­i­ty, some stu­dents would not nec­es­sar­i­ly have done so. The re­sults would re­flect these dy­nam­ics. We had the ad­di­tion­al chal­lenge of stu­dents hav­ing to adapt to re­turn­ing to a phys­i­cal space af­ter two-and-a-half years. There are many oth­er so­cio-eco­nom­ic and psy­cho-so­cial is­sues that im­pact­ed the stu­dents,” she told the Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day.

The Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly blamed the poor per­for­mances of stu­dents on learn­ing loss re­sult­ing from lack of face-to-face in­ter­ac­tion.

Of the to­tal of 19,079 stu­dents who wrote the ex­am, she said the num­ber who scored above 50 per cent to­talled 37.06 per cent.

TTUTA’s Pres­i­dent al­so said that TTUTA will not blame any sin­gle stake­hold­er for the SEA re­sults.

“We can­not as an as­so­ci­a­tion lay blame at any­one’s feet. There are a num­ber of con­di­tions that af­fect­ed the stu­dents as well as all cit­i­zens. Maybe, what needs to hap­pen is a lev­el of analy­sis, re­flec­tion and dis­cus­sion at a na­tion­al lev­el of what tran­spired in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem be­fore mak­ing it an ed­u­ca­tion is­sue. There must be di­a­logue with all stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing the ed­u­ca­tors, the unions as well as those who can as­sist in oth­er ar­eas.”

She added that in the past-pan­dem­ic world there should be a na­tion­al plan and not just the ap­proach of re­ly­ing on school syl­labus­es as a guide.

“We are look­ing at ed­u­ca­tion plans in terms of how we sur­vive in the post-pan­dem­ic world, build­ing stu­dents' ca­pac­i­ty for deal­ing with prob­lems. Un­der­stand­ing as well how­ev­er that we must have mech­a­nisms to deal with ma­jor sit­u­a­tions, so the sys­tem will not be desta­bilised too much, as oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions are do­ing this time.  Those are some of the ini­tia­tives that should be put in our sys­tem now.”

De­spite the chal­lenges and the SEA re­sults, she wished all stu­dents the best in their fu­ture stud­ies.

“At the end of the day, we still have to mo­ti­vate the stu­dents for them to max­imise their po­ten­tial.”