More than 44 par­ents protest­ed yes­ter­day out­side the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion on Alexan­dra Street, St Clair ob­ject­ing to the min­istry's plans to im­ple­ment the Con­tin­u­ous As­sess­ment Com­po­nent (CAC) as part of the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) from the next school term. They were armed with plac­ards which read: "Schools not equipped with ba­sic needs," "Par­ents are stake­hold­ers too," and "Fid­dling with the school cur­ricu­lum with­out enough con­sul­ta­tion." The CAC will in­clude the con­tentious Vi­su­al and Per­form­ing Arts (VA­PA) com­po­nent. With­in an hour of the start of their protest, the par­ents were in­vit­ed to an im­promp­tu meet­ing with the min­istry's act­ing Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer Har­ri­lal Seecha­ran and four oth­er min­istry of­fi­cials. The par­ents were led by Mar­cia Smith-John, whose child at­tends the Di­a­mond Vale Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry. Chil­dren of the protest­ing par­ents at­tend 15 schools, both pri­vate and pub­lic, through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go. Be­fore the meet­ing, Smith-John said, "We have de­cid­ed to gath­er out­side here to­day to send Mr Gopeesingh a mes­sage. We are not pleased with the changes he is mak­ing to im­ple­ment, come Sep­tem­ber, for the Stan­dard Five SEA class." She said the min­istry's ex­ten­sion of the date for SEA, in­tro­duced this year, cre­at­ed the room for the min­is­ter to in­tro­duce VA­PA. There are a lot of schools through­out T&T which are not pre­pared for the VA­PA pro­gramme, she said.

How­ev­er, she said she be­lieves some pri­vate schools have long been pre­pared. Smith-John said the Na­tion­al Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion, head­ed by Zena Ra­matali, is not rep­re­sent­ing them. "The PTA ex­ec­u­tive has made a de­ci­sion that they will sup­port Dr Gopeesingh on his pro­gramme with­out any con­sul­ta­tion from par­ents. Par­ents were in­vit­ed to a sem­i­nar where they dis­cussed the VA­PA pro­gramme, and then made a speech to the me­dia stat­ing they were in agree­ment with it." She said at that meet­ing she de­cid­ed to ask why they were sup­port­ing it and was asked to leave. Af­ter yes­ter­day's meet­ing be­tween five rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the protest­ing group and the min­istry, act­ing CEO Seecha­ran said the meet­ing was very cor­dial and that a lot of in­for­ma­tion had been shared. He said he be­lieved the par­ents had ex­pressed their sup­port for the pro­gramme and the out­stand­ing is­sue was the time of its im­ple­men­ta­tion, which the min­istry would con­sid­er. The par­ents and of­fi­cials al­so dis­cussed the re­sources avail­able and train­ing for teach­ers.

He said the min­istry would con­tin­ue to work to­ward be­ing ready for Sep­tem­ber but will take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the par­ents' con­cern that it is too soon for Stan­dard 5 stu­dents. Seecha­ran al­so re­vealed a pi­lot project had been done on a lim­it­ed scale in Ca­roni with some schools in that dis­trict and at the Learn­ing Re­source Cen­tre at McBean, Cou­va. He said the pi­lot was done last year and end­ed be­fore the teacher train­ing be­gan. Smith-John said, af­ter the meet­ing, the pro­tes­tors do not have a prob­lem with the pro­gramme. "We love what we are hear­ing con­cern­ing the pro­gramme...It will ben­e­fit all the chil­dren of T&T if it is im­ple­ment­ed in a way that is work­able for all the chil­dren. Our is­sue is still the tim­ing, to rush to get it start­ed in Sep­tem­ber." She said sug­ges­tions were put for­ward which will be tak­en back to the min­is­ter. The par­ents of­fered a sug­ges­tion that the pro­gramme should start with stu­dents two years be­fore they write the SEA. Smith-John said she felt the chil­dren should grow in­to the pro­gramme and so ben­e­fit from what VA­PA and CAC had to of­fer. Ra­matali, pres­i­dent of the NPTA, said in a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian that she did not sup­port the protest be­cause that was "the wrong ap­proach to chang­ing the cur­ricu­lum." She said the NPTA had in­vit­ed cur­ricu­lum ex­perts to meet­ings and had worked to en­sure par­ents un­der­stood their role and rights in the CAC process. "If they were present, I do not think they would be protest­ing. They need to get in­volved in the or­gan­i­sa­tion in a an­oth­er ca­pac­i­ty," she added.