RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath has ini­ti­at­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the dis­ap­pear­ance of Stu­dent-Based As­sess­ments (SBAs) for CSEC Forms Four and Five, fol­low­ing com­plaints by par­ents at Bar­rack­pore West Sec­ondary School over al­leged ad­min­is­tra­tive ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties.

Par­ents who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty told Guardian Me­dia they be­came alarmed af­ter learn­ing that SBA sub­mis­sions com­plet­ed by stu­dents could not be ac­count­ed for, de­spite as­sur­ances that the work had been prop­er­ly sub­mit­ted and se­cured by the school. The teacher in ques­tion had nev­er marked the SBAs and had not even set term test pa­pers for his class­es last year.

The SBAs, which forms a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of the CSEC ex­am­i­na­tion process, were re­port­ed­ly sub­mit­ted dig­i­tal­ly and stored on flash dri­ves.

How­ev­er, the de­vices were lat­er re­port­ed miss­ing, rais­ing ques­tions about in­ter­nal pro­ce­dures and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Par­ents al­so raised con­cerns about in­con­sis­ten­cies in class­room in­struc­tion and as­sess­ment prepa­ra­tion, claim­ing that there were pe­ri­ods when stu­dents were left with­out ad­e­quate guid­ance.

“We have made many re­ports about this, but no­body is tak­ing us on,” the par­ent said.

Par­ents fur­ther ex­pressed frus­tra­tion over what they de­scribed as a lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion from school ad­min­is­tra­tors. They said re­peat­ed at­tempts to get clar­i­ty on the sta­tus of the SBAs and the aca­d­e­m­ic stand­ing of their chil­dren were met with si­lence.

“Our next step was to reach out to the me­dia be­cause we are not get­ting any feed­back from the school,” an­oth­er par­ent ex­plained. “These SBAs are re­quired for CSEC, and with­out them, the chil­dren’s fu­ture is at risk.”

Par­ents ques­tioned how mul­ti­ple stages of re­view could have been by­passed with­out the is­sue be­ing iden­ti­fied ear­li­er.

It is be­lieved that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 60 stu­dents across Forms Four and Five may be af­fect­ed, though par­ents say they are still await­ing of­fi­cial con­fir­ma­tion.

Con­tact­ed for a com­ment, Min­is­ter Dowlath said the re­ports raised by par­ents are be­ing treat­ed se­ri­ous­ly and will be ex­am­ined thor­ough­ly.

Dr Dowlath said he will alert the min­istry’s school su­per­vi­sor and ini­ti­ate in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the dis­ap­pear­ance of the SBAs, as well as the con­cerns raised by par­ents.