On Tuesday, the children of Trinidad and Tobago sat the Secondary Entrance Assessment examination, formerly the 11-Plus, which determines which school they will enter in adolescence and, by extension, whether they will own a BMW or wash cars in adulthood. Get into the right school at age 11 and you're fast-tracked to success; get into the wrong one and you're firetrucked. Out of sympathy with the little ones whose lives may have been figuratively shot in the head this week, I begin my own 51-Plus exam today, doing as much as I can figure out from the maths section, and noting that today is All Fools Day.
Next Friday, I'll do the first part of the "language arts"-why it's not called simply "English" lies beyond my own linguistic artistry-and finish with the essay the following Friday. It will take three weeks to do, for fun, as a grown man, what the little ones had three hours for this week, as torture; and I'll get paid for it, while many of them will have had their dreams put paid to. These questions come from a book of practice tests, because the SEA is such top secret information that not even Julian Assange can get hold of this year's actual exam paper. On, then, to the numerical arts.
Mathematics. 75 minutes.
Q 1. Add 605 + 343. That's too easy but it must be noted some grownups would get different totals from most kids; former Prime Minister Panday, eg, would get several million, and current Minister of Works Jack Warner would get a loss of several million and need a billion dollar subsidy from FIFA.
Skip a few. Q 5. Find the sum of 123, 56 and 9. Wait a minute; where have the four, seven and eight gone? Was a public figure just spotted leaving the exam room with a stuffed duffel bag?
Q 7. What must be added to 478 to make 750? Answer: the entire West Indies batting aggregate from a complete tour against anyone but Bangladesh.
Q 9. Write 4/3 as a mixed number. The answer is one-and-a-third but soon-to-be-former Police Service Commission Chair Nizam Mohammed has just phoned me to say it's not fair that there should 4/3 mixed numbers when there are no Indian numbers.
Q 11. What is the HCF of 14, 16 and 20? The answer is Harry Harnarine but I'm not sure of the working out.
Q 16. Calculate 1/5 of 250? This represents the number of state board appointments going to the Congress of the People's nominees since the People's Partnership took over the reins of the Treasury, sorry, government; please note that the figure is not to be read as 'One fifth of 250' but as 'one or at most five in every 250'.
Q 20. Write 10? as a decimal fraction? The answer is the Congress of the People and the People's Partnership but no one in Trinidad can be sure of that working out. Skip on to the harder, worded problems.
Q 23. 20 per cent of a number is 42. What is the number? Shouldn't there be a semi-colon and not a full stop after 42? Is this a misplaced Language Arts question? The answer, in any case, is, "Kamla Persad-Bissessar", Trinidad's answer to every question no one understands. It used to be Lloyd Best, who had all the answers, but no one could have understood him because he was talking sense, not quoting the Bible or Koran; or, Sat Maharaj has just phoned to say, the Bhagavadgita.
Q 29. The sum of two pupils' ages is 18. The younger is 6. How old is the elder? This is clearly happening at an inner city primary school, where you can have six-year-olds and 16-year-olds in the same class.
Q 30. Divide 90 in the ratio of 1: 2 : 3. What is the largest share? Doh! Obviously the last one; he's getting three times as much as the first one, and 'a good bit' more than number two.
Q 33. Mr Riley paid $25 for one adult and three children's tickets to a school concert. Calculate the cost of a child's ticket if an adult ticket costs twice as much as a child's. Mr Riley got took; he should have played in the People's Band last Carnival, where, for nothing, he could have had his own private music truck.
Q 36. Robert is 155cm tall and his brother is 20cm shorter. How tall is Robert's brother? Better not to meddle in family business, ex-specially if them from Laventy or El Socorro and does settle dispute over rank with potow-pow.
Q 41. Increase 800 by 15 per cent. The answer is either CL Financial or the Hindu Credit Union but you may never get it, right or wrong.
Q 43. How many taxis will be needed to transport 168 children and 12 adults if one maxi can hold 14 passengers? The answer depends on where the maxi is parked; if it's in Laventy/Morvant, you only need one vehicle: blast Vybz Kartel and everyone will pile in; if it's in Barrackpore, the answer and working out is the same, except that you play chutney; if it's in St Clair, the answer is that it must move at once and must not throw Jouve paint on the people walls on the way to St James.
Q 49. Josh sells coconuts at $1 each. He gets 15 cents profit per sale. On Monday, he made a proft of $30.90. How many coconuts did he sell? A better question would be where Josh thief them coconut, or if he selling straws of cokeen with them, to be able to sell coconuts at a buck apiece and make a profit.
BC Pires looks set for vocational school. Read more of his writing at www.BCraw.com