Dear Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion it’s time we abol­ish the SEA.

As a hard-work­ing cit­i­zen of T&T re­spon­si­ble in some way for the fu­ture hu­man re­source of this na­tion, a par­ent, teacher and mem­ber of TTUTA, I hear you, my friends who are par­ents and teach­ers with a SEA child/chil­dren and/or class.

Now, I have been at the Stan­dard Two lev­el for most of my teach­ing ca­reer (21 years), bounced to Stan­dard One at one time and was in our school’s com­put­er lab for a lit­tle while (while it ex­ist­ed; it is no longer there), now been thrown in­to the Stan­dard Four/Five de­part­ment (Sep­tem­ber 2019) and it’s a dai­ly strug­gle, with my phi­los­o­phy of ed­u­ca­tion, teach­ing and learn­ing (the fun, en­gage­ment and em­pow­er­ment I was ex­posed to, which cre­at­ed in me a fire to be a “for­ev­er learn­er”) in con­stant con­flict with this “drill/prac­tice thing” they do at this lev­el.

Here is a sug­ges­tion, Mr Min­is­ter:

Let us just pause for a minute. In fact, let us just stop al­to­geth­er. No SEA this year and con­tin­u­ing. Stop fool­ing the pub­lic, the stu­dents, par­ents and teach­ers. This ex­am is not re­al­ly need­ed.

I am sure some al­ready know what school they will be at­tend­ing next. If you would like to use a mark for place­ment, well then, place all stu­dents based on how they have per­formed over the last six-and-a-half years.

Tal­ly up all the marks from all those term tests, for teach­ers, have in­tegri­ty.

There was no favour in test­ing or mark­ing at those in­stances. Those as­sess­ments hold val­ue. Then place them based on the score they would have ob­tained.

That sounds so much less of a has­sle to me. I call on the per­son­nel re­spon­si­ble at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, to take the time (now till Au­gust) to fix all schools, up­grade the re­sources and get them re­al­ly ready for the in­flux of the “new nor­mal” come Sep­tem­ber, the new aca­d­e­m­ic year: 2020-2021

PS: Teach­ers will agree that they reteach any­way all that “was taught” at the pre­vi­ous lev­el, (pri­ma­ry to sec­ondary to ter­tiary, for you see, our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem is one fo­cused on re­gur­gi­tat­ing what was shov­elled down for as­sess­ments. An ad­di­tion­al thought here, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion works bet­ter than com­pe­ti­tion most times.

Maybe you should meet with the ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cials in Bar­ba­dos, or bet­ter yet, take a look at the full sys­tem in the UK.

How about “mid­dle schools?” Pop­u­la­tion grow­ing and we do need more schools.

#ahum­ble­sug­ges­tion

#verye­mo­tion­alplea