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.