Sto­ry by CARISA LEE

The Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) ex­am­i­na­tions will be­gin on Ju­ly 13th.

The an­nounce­ment was made by Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, An­tho­ny Gar­cia, dur­ing a press con­fer­ence on Fri­day, at the Min­istry's head of­fice.

Ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter Gar­cia, the ex­am would con­sist of a "Pa­per One" which is mul­ti­ple choice, and a "Pa­per Two" for sub­jects with­out a school-based as­sess­ment (SBA) com­po­nent. These sub­jects in­clude Mod­ern Lan­guages and Hu­man & So­cial Bi­ol­o­gy.

The SBA for Vi­su­al Arts would be re­placed with a writ­ten jour­nal, while Sport or Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion will write on plans for a tour­na­ment.

The Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion al­so said the dead­line for SBA sub­mis­sion has been ex­tend­ed to June 30.

Gar­cia said the min­istry has been li­ais­ing with prin­ci­pals and teach­ers to as­sist stu­dents at schools, if nec­es­sary, with the com­ple­tion of SBAs for oth­er sub­jects and that will be from June 7th to June 30th.

“Teach­ers would be al­lowed to use the school's fa­cil­i­ties to as­sist stu­dents with prepar­ing SBAs,” the min­is­ter ex­plained, “how­ev­er, these groups must be less than five per­sons.”

From June 1st, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion will be re­ceiv­ing PPE and san­i­ta­tion prod­ucts for sec­ondary schools. Gar­cia said the rel­e­vant san­i­ta­tion and in­fra­struc­tur­al work nec­es­sary would be done be­fore the com­mence­ment of the ex­ams and would con­tin­ue through­out it.

Min­is­ter Gar­cia dis­missed a timetable cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia as false and con­tain­ing er­rors. He said the cor­rect timetable would be sent out soon. He main­tained that CSEC is a re­gion­al ex­am­i­na­tion and the de­ci­sion for the ex­am to be held in Ju­ly was not made by T&T alone.

Ja­maica's Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion has said that coun­try will not be able to hold the CSEC and CAPE in Ju­ly.

Min­is­ter Gar­cia al­so an­nounced that schools would be re­opened on Sep­tem­ber 1st.