The glob­al pan­dem­ic has been hard on every­one but for chil­dren, sud­den­ly plunged in­to a world filled with fear and un­cer­tain­ty, it has been par­tic­u­lar­ly rough. That is why spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion and sup­port needs to be di­rect­ed to­ward all our chil­dren but es­pe­cial­ly the can­di­dates in this year’s Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am.

Al­ready grap­pling with the stress of prepar­ing for an ex­am that many of them fear­ful­ly re­gard as life-chang­ing, these chil­dren have been fur­ther bur­dened with COVID-19 and the dif­fi­cult and un­ex­pect­ed changes the pan­dem­ic has brought in­to their lives.

They haven’t been able to at­tend phys­i­cal class­es since March 14 and at that time the SEA ex­am was less than a month away, on April 2. Hard­ly any of them could seam­less­ly tran­si­tion to on­line learn­ing which in­volved big emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal ad­just­ments for them and their par­ents or guardians.

Bear in mind, al­so, that some fam­i­lies don’t have the means to ac­cess on­line learn­ing, so for them, the anx­i­ety would have been dou­bled.

So, it is very dis­con­cert­ing that at such a crit­i­cal time these fre­quent dis­putes are be­ing waged very pub­licly be­tween the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) and oth­ers who are now look­ing more like com­pet­ing in­ter­ests than part­ners in ed­u­ca­tion.

The war of words be­ing waged over the re­sump­tion of class­es for SEA stu­dents, the date for the ex­am and even a stipend for the teach­ers, places these chil­dren in the mid­dle of a mess from which they should have been shield­ed. It is bound to add to the psy­cho­log­i­cal and emo­tion­al stress they are al­ready ex­pe­ri­enc­ing.

Cur­rent­ly, when there is so much fo­cus glob­al­ly on fair­ness and equal­i­ty, spare a thought for these chil­dren who de­serve a lot more sup­port and en­cour­age­ment than they are get­ting right now as adults spar over stipends and en­ti­tle­ments. What about pro­tect­ing their rights to ed­u­ca­tion?

These fre­quent skir­mish­es de­tract from the very hard work a lot of teach­ers have been putting in on­line to min­imise dis­rup­tions in learn­ing for their stu­dents. It al­so threat­ens the gains that have been made to fill teach­ing and learn­ing gaps caused by the pan­dem­ic.

For all con­cerned, the pri­or­i­ty should be the SEA stu­dents who are al­ready fac­ing so much tur­moil as they pre­pare for the next stage of their ed­u­ca­tion jour­ney, sec­ondary school. Their best in­ter­ests must be placed above all the oth­er in­ter­ests now pub­licly fight­ing over some very my­opic and less im­por­tant mat­ters.

While TTUTA is well with­in its rights as a trade union to de­fend the rights of its work­ers, it must al­so up­hold the high­est pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards in ed­u­ca­tion.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, rep­re­sent­ed in this on­go­ing di­a­logue by An­tho­ny Gar­cia, an ed­u­ca­tor by pro­fes­sion, must fa­cil­i­tate more pro­duc­tive con­sul­ta­tions on the way for­ward for this very im­por­tant sec­tor and all its stake­hold­ers.

Think about these chil­dren and make sure the best is pro­vid­ed for their ed­u­ca­tion.