For too long our eleven - thir­teen-year olds have been sub­ject­ed to a one ex­am for­mat to shape their fu­ture. Com­mon En­trance, SEA same dif­fer­ence.

The one ray of hope was the Con­tin­u­ous As­sess­ment Com­po­nent where stu­dents were as­sessed over a pe­ri­od in oth­er sub­ject ar­eas such as Vi­su­al Arts, Agri­cul­tur­al Sci­ence and Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion. CAC was re­moved for sev­er­al rea­sons and our chil­dren are again left with a one-shot chance. Add the Con­cor­dat in the mix and we have a con­tin­ued ed­u­ca­tion di­vide.

It is time to re­move the SEA or any one ex­am man­i­fes­ta­tion.

A sug­ges­tion, re­move the ex­am, in­tro­duce Con­tin­u­ous As­sess­ment for Lan­guage Arts, Math­e­mat­ics, Cre­ative Writ­ing and So­cial Stud­ies us­ing the Na­tion­al Ex­am­i­na­tion for­mat for Stan­dards 3, 4 and 5 with a per­cent­age weight of 10 per cent, 20 per cent and 30 per cent re­spec­tive­ly. These as­sess­ments can be done on the first Thurs­day in May. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Mu­sic, Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion & Dance, Dra­ma, Vi­su­al Arts and Agri­cul­tur­al Sci­ence should be as­sessed in Stan­dards 4 & 5 dur­ing the 2nd week of June with a per­cent­age weight of 15 per cent and 25 per cent re­spec­tive­ly. Teach­ers can be en­list­ed to mark these sub­jects dur­ing that week, where they will be re­im­bursed for mileage.

The Spir­it of the Con­cor­dat of 1960 can be main­tained through the Preser­va­tion and Char­ac­ter of De­nom­i­na­tion­al Schools by en­sur­ing that Prin­ci­pals can al­lo­cate 20 per cent of stu­dents as they see fit once they pass the CA, with the re­main­ing 80 per cent avail­able to the Gov­ern­ment for plac­ing, again based on pass­ing the CA.

This can start Sept 2021, with the first plac­ings be­ing done in 2024. By 2025 SEA should be no more. This pro­vides the time for all Units of the MOE- CPDD, DERE, SSD etc, to li­aise with par­ents and guardians for thor­ough un­der­stand­ing.

It can be done, it is achiev­able...Over to you Min­is­ter Gads­by-Dol­ly.