JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, July 10, 2025

Row over CAC marking system brings SEA of turmoil

by

20140704

Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer Har­ri­lal Seecha­ran yes­ter­day ad­mit­ted that there were some dis­crep­an­cies with the scor­ing sys­tem used by teach­ers to as­sess stu­dents in the Con­tin­u­ous As­sess­ment Com­po­nent (CAC).He said so as he ad­dressed con­cerns raised by par­ents and prin­ci­pals across the coun­try about the place­ment of stu­dents fol­low­ing this year's Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am.Seecha­ran ex­plained while the place­ment of stu­dents had been a fair one, the per­for­mance of the stu­dents cre­at­ed a prob­lem."The re­al­i­ty is that this year, we have had high­er scores over­all and the com­pe­ti­tion was ex­treme­ly keen," he said.

The im­proved per­for­mances re­sult­ed in many stu­dents not be­ing able to se­cure a place at their first or sec­ond choice schools, Seecha­ran said.While 18,239 stu­dents wrote the 2014 SEA ex­am, Seecha­ran said there were on­ly 3,500 spaces avail­able at sev­en and five-year schools and they were of­ten list­ed as first and sec­ond choic­es by stu­dents.Sev­er­al prin­ci­pals, par­ents and stu­dents have raised ques­tions seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion about the cri­te­ria used to as­sess and place stu­dents as they be­lieve mod­er­at­ed scores played a great part in this de­ter­mi­na­tion.

Many con­tend their in­di­vid­ual per­for­mance rat­ing, com­bined with the CAC marks, were not re­flect­ed in their place­ments.In­tro­duced this year, the CAC formed 20 per cent of the over­all SEA grade.

But on May 8, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh an­nounced that from 2015 the CAC would ac­count for 40 per cent of the fi­nal SEA grade.Asked about the as­sess­ment process, Seecha­ran said the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil (CXC) had spe­cif­ic guide­lines.He said a ran­dom sam­ple of stu­dent book­lets were col­lect­ed from all pri­ma­ry schools and in in­stances where the dis­crep­an­cies in the mark­ing scheme were not­ed, all the book­lets of the re­spec­tive schools were then tak­en to be as­sessed."We recog­nise when teach­ers as­sign scores, some may have been le­nient or marked un­fair­ly, so we had to take all the book­lets for re­mark­ing and scores would have been ad­just­ed based on the find­ings," he said.

Un­able to say just how many schools had dis­crep­an­cies which were re­viewed, Seecha­ran said the min­istry was yet to re­ceive a fi­nal re­port from CXC.He al­so re­mind­ed par­ents place­ments were based on mer­it, choic­es and in­di­vid­ual per­for­mance.He said par­ents had two weeks to sub­mit queries to the prin­ci­pal for it to be sent to the min­istry and then on to CXC. He said this would cost Bds$25, as the stu­dent's book­let would have to be sent back to Bar­ba­dos for re­view.Re­gard­ing the is­sue of trans­fers, he said there was a pro­ce­dure to be fol­lowed.Con­tact­ed on the is­sue yes­ter­day, T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Da­vanand Sinanan de­clined to com­ment, as he said they had not re­ceived any "sol­id ev­i­dence" to that ef­fect but he not­ed the con­cerns ex­pressed and promised to ad­dress the mat­ter with the min­istry.Sinanan said if par­ents were dis­sat­is­fied with their child's re­sults they were free to take up the is­sue with the min­istry.

Trans­fer Pro­ce­dure

Par­ents seek­ing a trans­fer for their chil­dren must reg­is­ter the stu­dent at the school to which the child has been as­signed.Fol­low­ing the reg­is­tra­tion, par­ents can in­di­cate to the prin­ci­pal they are seek­ing a trans­fer and a form will be pro­vid­ed to them.The form, which is to be sub­mit­ted to the prin­ci­pal of the as­signed school, will then be for­ward­ed to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion for con­sid­er­a­tion.If the trans­fer is ap­proved, the par­ents will be con­tact­ed and ad­vised.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored