After the emotional high wire of last Thursday, when more than 18,000 students sat the Secondary Entrance Assessment exam, the conversation has begun again about whether this traditional education rite of passage is improving the prospects and accurately measuring the potential of the largest possible number of secondary school age children.The tragic event reported on the eve of the exam raised further concerns about the pressures and expectations that attend the SEA and their impact on children of that age.
This process has, under different names, been the point at which pre-teen children in T&T and much of the Caribbean have been placed on different educational tracks based on their performance in a three-hour examination.There is no doubt that the worry associated with the importance of the exam to a child's future has become a part of T&T culture. Before the SEA was introduced in 2001, the country wrestled for decades with its predecessor, the Common Entrance Examination.
For some time, the Ministry of Education has been talking about introducing the Continuous Assessment Component (CAC) as a way of better fitting students to their education.To its credit, the Ministry has been holding discussions with stakeholders toward crafting an evolution beyond the SEA that will measure progress across a much larger swath of our children's development and provide better guidance for the placement of children in schools suitable to their aptitudes and talents.
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