SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD 

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia says the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am (CAPE) and the Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) ex­am­i­na­tions sched­uled for Ju­ly will not be on­line done in T&T. In­stead, Gar­cia said the ex­am­i­na­tions will be ad­min­is­tered on pa­per in schools. 

On Fri­day, the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil (CXC) an­nounced the re­gion­al ex­am­i­na­tions would be card­ed for Ju­ly af­ter the First Emer­gency Vir­tu­al Meet­ing of the Coun­cil for Hu­man and So­cial De­vel­op­ment (COHSOD) with Min­is­ters of Ed­u­ca­tion from all coun­tries in the re­gion where the ex­am is ad­min­is­tered.

The COHSOD agreed for the ex­ams to be via an e-Test­ing modal­i­ty in coun­tries that are equipped with the in­fra­struc­ture to ac­com­mo­date that kind of test­ing.

How­ev­er, T&T is not one of those coun­tries.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Gar­cia said he could not give any oth­er in­for­ma­tion on how the ex­ams would be ad­min­is­tered as those “fine de­tails” need to be ironed out.

“Those are ar­eas that we are work­ing on and at this time, what­ev­er we do will de­pend on the Min­istry of Health in terms of the safe­ty,” Gar­cia said. 

The coun­try is cur­rent­ly in phase one of its re­open­ing- which al­lows restau­rants and fast food out­lets to re­sume food ser­vice on a take­away ba­sis on­ly. Schools re­main closed un­til Sep­tem­ber. If there are no new COVID-19 pos­i­tive cas­es phase two is set to be en­act­ed on May 24 when the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor will be re­opened and pub­lic-sec­tor con­struc­tion projects will be al­lowed to re­sume.

Phase three will see the restart­ing of work by the en­tire pub­lic sec­tor, pri­vate sec­tor con­struc­tion and the in­crease in ca­pac­i­ty from 50 to 75 per cent for pub­lic trans­port ve­hi­cles. Phase four will en­tail the re­open­ing of all malls and beach­es, and phase five will see the re­open­ing of cin­e­mas and phase six will be the re­open­ing of bor­ders.