The T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) has con­demned the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion's im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Con­tin­u­ous As­sess­ment Com­po­nent (CAC) of the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am.In a strong­ly-word­ed press re­lease sent to the me­dia late last week, TTUTA re­ferred to the min­istry's im­ple­men­ta­tion of the CAC as a "farce."

This came af­ter 18,000 Stan­dard Five pupils wrote the cre­ative writ­ing com­po­nent of the SEA last Thurs­day. In the re­lease, TTUTA again ex­pressed its "dis­may at the rushed, reck­less im­ple­men­ta­tion of the ill-planned CAC."Signed by TTUTA's gen­er­al sec­re­tary Pe­ter Wil­son, the re­lease said the as­so­ci­a­tion's con­tin­ued calls for the min­istry to re­vis­it its ap­proach and timetable for im­ple­men­ta­tion had fall­en on deaf ears.

The re­lease out­lined six rea­sons why the CAC was ill-planned.Among them were:

�2 not enough train­ing for teach­ers

�2 dif­fer­ent time­lines giv­en to dif­fer­ent dis­tricts

�2 lack of stor­age at schools for stu­dent port­fo­lios

"Schools through­out the coun­try are not on a lev­el play­ing field giv­en the vast dis­par­i­ty in the avail­able teach­ing re­sources for the dif­fer­ent sub­ject ar­eas," the re­lease said."In such a sit­u­a­tion and giv­en the ad hoc, ex­tem­pore ap­proach to plan­ning, pro­ce­dures and im­ple­men­ta­tion, the CAC will not be mean­ing­ful or fair to all the na­tion's chil­dren.

"It will sim­ply be­come an­oth­er stress­ful hur­dle to be over­come in a high-stakes com­pet­i­tive ex­am­i­na­tion process and will re­in­force the 'over test­ing' cul­ture that has gripped our pri­ma­ry schools."The as­so­ci­a­tion called for the min­istry to hold mean­ing­ful con­sul­ta­tions with TTUTA, oth­er stake­hold­ers and the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, and called for the CAC to be post­poned un­til a "well-de­signed" pro­gramme is de­vel­oped.