Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) is con­sid­er­ing re­vamp­ing how it ho­n­ours the top-per­form­ing stu­dents in the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA).

Thurs­day’s ex­am­i­na­tion will be done by 1,005 stu­dents on the is­land, in­clud­ing 497 girls and 508 boys.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Ed­u­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Or­lan­do Kerr said the rank­ing of the top five stu­dents has caused con­fu­sion and un­due trau­ma to stu­dents and is be­ing weighed.

Kerr’s com­ments came three days af­ter par­ent Kester Charles com­plained that his daugh­ter Khylie, who was ini­tial­ly ranked sec­ond on the is­land, was not in­vit­ed to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion func­tion last Thurs­day, which cel­e­brat­ed the top 200 stu­dents in the coun­try.

In Sep­tem­ber, the min­istry an­nounced that two To­ba­go stu­dents were in the top 200, which led the Charles fam­i­ly to be­lieve she would be ho­n­oured.

How­ev­er, un­be­knownst to the Charles fam­i­ly, the par­ents of the third-ranked To­ba­go stu­dent queried his SEA marks, and he was sub­se­quent­ly up­grad­ed to sec­ond place, tak­ing her spot in the top 200.

Charles told Guardian Me­dia the fam­i­ly bought air­line tick­ets to Trinidad for the cer­e­mo­ny, but the in­vi­ta­tion nev­er came.

He said his daugh­ter is dis­traught, and he chas­tised the min­istry and the di­vi­sion for not com­mu­ni­cat­ing with them.

How­ev­er, school su­per­vi­sor Phillip Rochford said nei­ther he nor Kerr re­ceived any com­plaint about the in­ci­dent.

“It is a bit un­for­tu­nate for the stu­dent, but we hope that the par­ent would bring that nec­es­sary clar­i­ty to her that this does not make her who she is,” he said.

Asked whether the di­vi­sion would con­sid­er scrap­ping the rank­ing of the top five stu­dents, Kerr said a re­vis­it of the cur­rent sys­tem is clear­ly war­rant­ed.

Kerr said the pub­lic must be re­mind­ed that the pur­pose of the ex­am is to place the stu­dents, not rank them.

He said there is a win­dow for queries to be lodged, which can af­fect any pre­vi­ous rank­ing.

Ann Natasha Sec­ond, tech­ni­cal ad­vi­sor, di­vi­sion, said the THA aims to get as many stu­dents to achieve or ex­ceed the mean na­tion­al SEA score of 200.

She said the di­vi­sion has moved away from fo­cus­ing on rank­ings as its aim is for as many stu­dents as pos­si­ble to ex­cel.

Mean­while, for­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly chas­tised Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath for adding fur­ther trau­ma to a stu­dent through the rein­tro­duc­tion of the rank­ings. She said Dowlath must un­der­stand the “ex­treme men­tal stress” caused by the ex­am.