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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Teachers on SEA exam: Gopeesingh under pressure to keep it

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20140723

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) De­vanand Sinanan says Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh knows the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tion has to go but is bow­ing to po­lit­i­cal pres­sure from de­nom­i­na­tion­al boards which want to main­tain the sta­tus quo of pre­sid­ing over pres­tige schools.

"The min­is­ter's heart is in the right place and he knows ex­act­ly what needs to be done to re­move this ex­am­i­na­tion but whether he has the po­lit­i­cal will to take that bold step and do away with the ex­am is a dif­fer­ent ques­tion," Sinanan said in an in­ter­view on Mon­day.He added: "He is bow­ing to po­lit­i­cal pres­sure from the en­ti­ties which ben­e­fit sub­stan­tial­ly from the pres­tige/non-pres­tige school syn­drome in­to which the ex­am has mor­phed.

"I am not afraid to say that re­li­gious bod­ies are the ones who ben­e­fit most from the sta­tus quo. If you take away schools from the de­nom­i­na­tion­al boards the church­es will col­lapse. They con­tin­ue to ex­ist by and large, in many in­stances, by the fact that they run the pres­tige schools."They have to en­sure in the eyes of the pop­u­la­tion that they must con­tin­ue to think they run the bet­ter qual­i­ty schools to en­sure their con­tin­ued ex­is­tence and role in the scheme of things."

He said if the play­ing field was lev­elled and all sec­ondary schools pro­vid­ed equal­i­ty and eq­ui­ty, then there would be no ques­tion of who ran the bet­ter schools."The re­li­gious bod­ies would do all they can to en­sure the sta­tus quo, and when they speak, gov­ern­ment lis­tens," Sinanan said.The union leader was re­spond­ing to state­ments made by Gopeesingh last week in San Fer­nan­do.

At a lun­cheon he host­ed for the top 2014 SEA stu­dents, Gopeesingh said while he has ex­pressed the de­sire to do away with the dread­ed SEA ex­ams and in­vit­ed rec­om­men­da­tions from a na­tion­al per­spec­tive, sad­ly, none had been forth­com­ing from those who had been most crit­i­cal. "That is sim­ply not true," said Sinanan, who has ad­vo­cat­ed for the com­plete re­moval of the ex­am.

He charged: "He has been forced to back­down. We have gone on record say­ing it is time for the SEA ex­am­i­na­tion to go. And go means go, not to re­place it with some­thing else, as what hap­pened when SEA re­placed the Com­mon En­trance Ex­am­i­na­tion."Zena Ra­matali, pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA), al­so said that a decade ago her or­gan­i­sa­tion rec­om­mend­ed drop­ping the ex­am."But the min­is­ter can't make a pro­nounce­ment in the me­dia and ex­pect us to re­spond," she said

Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry Schools' Prin­ci­pals' As­so­ci­a­tion (NAPSPA) Val­lence Ramb­harat al­so has gone on record as say­ing the SEA is a bur­den, not on­ly on stu­dents, but teach­ers, ed­u­ca­tors and their par­ents.Sinanan said there was no need for an ex­am­i­na­tion to tran­si­tion pri­ma­ry school stu­dents in­to sec­ondary schools now, when there is uni­ver­sal sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion.

He re­called the ex­am­i­na­tion was de­vised as a kind of se­lec­tion process for the ad­vance­ment of a per­cent­age of stu­dents when there were lim­it­ed sec­ondary places.He added: "That sit­u­a­tion ex­ists no more. We have uni­ver­sal ed­u­ca­tion so why do we still need it and what is the pur­pose of this ex­am?"This ex­am is no longer se­lect­ing stu­dents to move on. It has emerged as a means of strat­i­fy­ing stu­dents, per­pet­u­at­ing a class dif­fer­en­tial in­to pres­tige and non-pres­tige, good schools and bad schools.

"This is ab­solute­ly un­de­sir­able if you are talk­ing about qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion. So this ex­am is do­ing more harm than good."In ad­vanc­ing its com­plete re­moval, Sinanan said the al­ter­na­tive was to ad­min­is­ter the Con­tin­u­ous As­sess­ment Com­po­nent (CAC) as­pect to en­sure all pri­ma­ry schools came up to the stan­dards of lit­er­a­cy and nu­mer­a­cy so there would be a seam­less tran­si­tion in­to sec­ondary schools and stu­dents would be able to ac­cess the cur­ricu­lum of­fered.

The CAC was in­tro­duced in the 2012 ex­am­i­na­tion for the as­sess­ment of Stan­dards Four and Five stu­dents in a num­ber of ar­eas, in­clud­ing cre­at­ing writ­ing, vi­su­al and per­form­ing arts, ethics and morals.Twen­ty per cent of the marks from this as­sess­ment formed part of the fi­nal mark giv­en for the 2014 SEA ex­ams.Gopeesingh said next year, the CAC com­po­nent would be in­creased to 30 per cent, with ten per cent from what has been ob­tained from Stan­dard Four and 70 per cent from lan­guage arts and math­e­mat­ics.


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