Acting Minister of Education Fazal Karim says the July 4 release of the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) results will remain unchanged."I am advised by the Ministry of Education that the results will be released during the time that it is normally allocated to be released," Karim said during a scholarship award ceremony at the Ministry of Works and Infrastructure, Port-of-Spain, on Wednesday.
Adding that the results are on stream to be issued during the scheduled time, he said, "In other words, it won't be late." His comment came in the wake of calls by the T&T Unified Teachers Association (TTUTA) to release the results earlier.Karim, Minister of Tertiary Education and Skills Training, is acting for Dr Tim Gopeesingh, who is out of the country until July 1.In a telephone interview yesterday responding to Karim's announcement, TTUTA secretary Peter Wilson said he did not accept the Ministry's stance to leave the July 4 date."Well, we don't accept that kind of position by the Ministry. We maintain our position that results should be released a week earlier," he added.The Education Ministry announced that the SEA results would be released to schools and made available on the ministry's Web site on July 4, one day before the school term ends.
TTUTA, however, had called on the ministry to release the results at least one week earlier to allow more time for secondary schools to prepare for registration during the school term.
Wilson noted the July 4 date prolonged the anxiety of parents and students and infringed on teachers' vacation days, since they would have to facilitate the registration process."It must be noted that teachers' vacation is one of the terms and conditions of service of teachers, as with most other workers, and the MoE should not assume that it can unilaterally impose on or interfere with this entitlement," Wilson said in a release.Alicia Busby, communications adviser at the ministry, said TTUTA was overreacting to the July 4 date."They are making much ado about nothing really," she said via telephone on Wednesday.Busby explained that prior to 2012, the SEA exam usually took place in March and results were released in mid-to late June–about 12 weeks after. Last year, the exam was moved to May and results were released in the last week of school, similar to the plan for this year and about six to eight weeks after the exam, she said."This is a much shorter timeframe."
Asked about TTUTA's concerns that teachers will have to use part of their vacation to register new students, she said it was not "vacation" in the conventional sense. She said during that time teachers were not on vacation, "per se" and as such, no one was denying them their vacation days.Wilson rejected the claim saying it was "clear that school vacation is also legitmate vacation for teachers" and "holidays are not at the discretion of the ministry."A secondary school teacher from south Trinidad, who did not want to be identified, agreed with Busby that the teachers' vacation was unconventional because "if they call you to school, you are supposed to go." He said, however, that teachers could and did say no.He said since the announcement of the July 4 results release, several teachers had made it clear to his school's principal that they would not be coming out to register students after school was closed on July 5.