Clay­ton Clarke

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Sec­re­tary for Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy Zor­isha Hack­ett says the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly can de­cide if it wants to con­tin­ue us­ing the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) Ex­am­i­na­tion.

Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion from the me­dia on whether the THA would sup­port the abo­li­tion of the SEA, Hack­ett said con­fi­dent­ly, “Yes, To­ba­go does have the au­ton­o­my to de­ter­mine whether we have a place­ment ex­am­i­na­tion or not. It is one of the ar­eas we al­ways toyed with, one of the area we try to push the en­ve­lope with, but, of course, cur­rent­ly the SEA is a place­ment ex­ams.”

Speak­ing at a vir­tu­al news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day on the per­for­mance of stu­dents in To­ba­go in this year’s ex­am, Hack­ett said such a de­ci­sion will on­ly be tak­en af­ter con­sult­ing with stake­hold­ers.

“It would not hap­pen overnight. Whether we take that na­tion­al di­rec­tion or not, whether we go in an­oth­er di­rec­tion, your Sec­re­tary will just not wake up (with an) overnight de­ci­sion (on) whether we should or should not have a place­ment ex­am­i­na­tion.

“That de­ci­sion would come from you the peo­ple and we are go­ing to en­gage with you, our val­ued stake­hold­ers, to en­sure what­ev­er de­ci­sion is made for this is­land, is one that is re­ward­ing and ben­e­fi­cial to all.”

Hack­ett, who was a sec­ondary school teacher, added with more school places avail­able on the is­land, ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cials will al­so have to es­tab­lish the cri­te­ria for place­ment should the THA opt out of the SEA.

“There was one time when we had less schools than stu­dents. I think we have enough place (now). How do you de­ter­mine which stu­dent goes to which school? Is it that you are go­ing to zone stu­dents?”

Mean­while, she said stu­dents in To­ba­go who wrote this year’s s Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment ex­am­i­na­tion per­formed just be­low the na­tion­al av­er­age.

One thou­sand and forty-eight pri­ma­ry school pupils wrote the ex­am and ac­cord­ing to Hack­ett, the girls were two points short of the av­er­age mark across the na­tion.

“The na­tion­al av­er­age to­tal score stands at 199.99 points. In To­ba­go av­er­age score for girls was 197.64, on­ly three points shy of the na­tion­al av­er­age. In con­trast, boys achieved an av­er­age to­tal core of 193.88, in­di­cat­ing a sev­en-point de­vi­a­tion from the na­tion­al av­er­age,” ex­plained Hack­ett.

She added, the per­for­mance of pupils in To­ba­go im­proved in re­cent years and there will be a con­tin­u­a­tion of the re­me­di­al ef­forts with­in the school sys­tem.

Girls out­per­formed the boys in the ex­am, Hack­ett said.

“The mean to­tal score for boys was 190.27 points while girls achieved a mean to­tal score of 197.64 points.”

She con­tin­ued that “the dis­par­i­ty ap­pears to be in­flu­enced by a larg­er num­ber of male stu­dents falling with the re­me­di­al score range.”

Mean­while, Hack­ett said she was in sup­port of the new hair­style pol­i­cy an­nounced by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion af­ter the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing stu­dents at the Trin­i­ty Col­lege, Mo­ka grad­u­a­tion.

Hack­ett said the dis­cus­sion on the is­sue was long over­due.

“It is un­for­tu­nate it took that Trin­i­ty grad­u­a­tion to bring it to the fore. We want­ed our schools through PTA, through stu­dent coun­cil, through staff to ac­tu­al­ly sit and break down ex­act­ly what they want­ed to do in their ac­tu­al school set­ting fol­low­ing this na­tion­al pol­i­cy,” she said.