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Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Govt scraps SEA preparation classes

by

Gail Alexander
1798 days ago
20200806
Standard 5 teacher Sharon Jackman chats with her students at the St Paul’s Boys’ Anglican Primary School, San Fernando, yesterday, after classes were dismissed. Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley yesterday announced Government had decided to scrap the SEA preparation classes due to the COVID-19 spike.

Standard 5 teacher Sharon Jackman chats with her students at the St Paul’s Boys’ Anglican Primary School, San Fernando, yesterday, after classes were dismissed. Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley yesterday announced Government had decided to scrap the SEA preparation classes due to the COVID-19 spike.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

Pupils prepar­ing for the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tion will do their work at home from to­day un­til the Au­gust 20 test - and bars and restau­rants are now the biggest COVID-19 risk.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day an­nounced the de­vel­op­ments as COVID-19 cas­es rose by five to 199.

And he’s made a spe­cial ap­peal to the po­lice for en­force­ment of the law re­gard­ing bars and restau­rants.

“I want to see the laws en­forced to the lim­it!” he de­clared.

Min­istry of Health au­thor­i­ties yes­ter­day re­vealed that a “fair num­ber” of su­per-spread­ing was not­ed among peo­ple who had con­tract­ed in­fec­tions in two or three bars and had spread it to an un­re­lat­ed group.

Row­ley said what T&T did n the be­gin­ning of the pan­dem­ic was still serv­ing the coun­try well and the virus wasn’t rag­ing out of con­trol. He said the con­tacts of the re­cent cas­es have been found, oth­ers were be­ing traced and he didn’t want pan­ic re­ac­tions.

He said f it comes to a point where the risk re­quires cer­tain oth­er de­ci­sions and more needs to be done, “then we’ll make those de­ci­sions – but we’re not there now.”

But he said some things have in­creased risk and in the mon­i­tor­ing schools af­ter SEA stu­dents went out to class­es, it has been not­ed nine chil­dren had the virus - in­clud­ing four from the SEA group and five oth­ers.

“We don’t want to live with that as a high-risk area even though we want to get the ex­am done,” Row­ley added.

Gov­ern­ment and health ex­perts con­clud­ed the SEA stu­dents shouldn’t con­tin­ue go­ing to school to do their prepa­ra­tions.

“We de­cid­ed to dis­con­tin­ue that at this stage from (to­day),” the PM said.

He said it was ex­pect­ed the pupils will now do their prepa­ra­tions at home. Row­ley ap­pealed for par­ents to help their charges pre­pare over the next two weeks, adding Gov­ern­ment is still com­mit­ted to hav­ing the ex­am on Au­gust 20.

“Let’s hold the line to that test,” he said.

But if there’s an ex­plo­sion of cas­es ahead the Gov­ern­ment would have to re­act, he added.

Row­ley al­so said there would be no change on the planned re­open­ing of schools in the first week of Sep­tem­ber but ad­mit­ted they will be opened with some el­e­ment of risk man­age­ment.

“We’ll mon­i­tor it for an­oth­er two weeks and based on what comes up, then we’ll con­firm that date or re­view for change. But for now, we’ll leave it the way it is. If the risk is too much, we’ll ad­just ac­cord­ing­ly.”

Row­ley said he was al­so a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed at the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion’s (TTUTA) call to teach­ers not to re­port for work be­fore yes­ter­day’s de­ci­sion.

“When we say we’re in this to­geth­er, we mean every­body and all de­ci­sions are made for all. But it’s not help­ful if peo­ple in lead­er­ship po­si­tions won’t ac­cept what Trinidad and To­ba­go is do­ing as they want to pro­tect them­selves bet­ter,” he not­ed.

He asked what would hap­pen if oth­er groups like nurs­es say the same.

“Then all fall down. This ‘My-Way-Or-The-High­way’ po­si­tion de­rails our ef­fort. Every­one in Trinidad and To­ba­go is ex­posed to some risk so no one should say they won’t take ‘risk’ and stay away from schools.’’

Bar limes cre­at­ing su­per spread­ers

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so not­ed that Pub­lic Ser­vice num­bers are be­ing ro­tat­ed to con­trol ex­po­sure to the virus. The pri­vate sec­tor, he said, has al­so been very co-op­er­a­tive with ad­just­ments and Gov­ern­ment isn’t see­ing in­creased in­fec­tions there.

How­ev­er, he not­ed, “The biggest risk we’re fac­ing now is from our lim­ing and drink­ing friends, those eat­ing out and in restau­rants and bars. We have in­stances of trac­ing tak­ing us to those lo­ca­tions.

“Bars and restau­rants re­main a threat. We’re dou­bling up on our dai­ly mon­i­tor­ing of them. This morn­ing I spoke to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter to speak to the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to en­force the law - I want to see the laws en­forced to the lim­it! There’s no re­place­ment mod­el for this. Pro­tec­tion re­mains in law be­ing en­forced.”

He not­ed the “ir­re­spon­si­ble mi­nor­i­ty” in bars and peo­ple go­ing to par­ties and be­ing ir­re­spon­si­ble threat­ened na­tion­al well-be­ing.

“All that’s re­quired is be­ing re­spon­si­ble. If you’re go­ing for a drink be alert to who’s close to you. If you’re in a crowd of more than 10, you’re break­ing the law,” he said.

Row­ley said the last lock­down cost bil­lions and if a lock­down had to be re­turned to that mon­ey isn’t avail­able.

“Jobs we saved in that lock­down, may not be sal­vage­able in an­oth­er,” he said.

He said if peo­ple wore masks and didn’t con­gre­gate they’d per­son­al­ly con­tribute to halt­ing the virus’ spread.

COVID-19SEA


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