Shal­iza Has­sanali

With one week be­fore schools re­open their doors for the new aca­d­e­m­ic year, Op­po­si­tion MP Ani­ta Haynes is ques­tion­ing how many of the 2,700 Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) pupils who en­rolled for the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s Ju­ly/Au­gust Va­ca­tion Re­vi­sion Pro­gramme have achieved the lev­els to en­ter sec­ondary school.

The is­sue was raised by Haynes dur­ing a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) press con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

Point­ing out that the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor faced the great­est fall­out from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Haynes said this was ev­i­dent in the 2022 SEA re­sults, which showed 9,000 of the 19,000-plus pupils who wrote the ex­ams scored less than 50 per cent in the ex­am­i­na­tion.

As a re­sult of the pupils’ poor per­for­mance, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly of­fered face-to-face re­me­di­al class­es dur­ing the sum­mer va­ca­tion. Fol­low­ing reg­is­tra­tion, how­ev­er, on­ly 2,700 of the 9,000 pupils signed up for the class­es at 33 cen­tres across the coun­try.

The pro­gramme, which ran from Ju­ly 18-Au­gust 12, al­lowed pupils the op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vote more time in Math­e­mat­ics, Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts, Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts Writ­ing and Read­ing to bet­ter pre­pare them for their tran­si­tion to sec­ondary school next month.

The cost of the pro­gramme was es­ti­mat­ed at $10 mil­lion.

Say­ing the pro­gramme was con­cep­tu­alised based on the min­istry’s in­com­pe­tence and fail­ure, Haynes said this year’s SEA re­sults were the worst the coun­try had seen in decades.

“We are look­ing at a pro­gramme that was meant to last four weeks. The pro­gramme was large­ly un­der­sub­scribed. It was sup­posed to cater for 9,000 stu­dents who nev­er made the pass­ing grade to en­ter sec­ondary school next week. And what we have from the min­istry... ab­solute si­lence.”

She said for the en­tire Ju­ly/Au­gust hol­i­days, Gads­by-Dol­ly “seemed to have al­so gone on va­ca­tion” and had gone silent

At the on­set of the pro­gramme, Haynes said the UNC called for rig­or­ous mon­i­tor­ing and an eval­u­a­tion. She said it was in­suf­fi­cient to host a pro­gramme and not tell the pop­u­la­tion about its key de­liv­er­ables.

Haynes said no in­for­ma­tion has been forth­com­ing re­gard­ing its suc­cess rate al­though the pro­gramme has con­clud­ed.

“They have been abysmal with da­ta col­lec­tion and equal­ly abysmal with re­port­ing to key stake­hold­ers and the pop­u­la­tion at large as to what is tak­ing place with the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor. But be­yond that, what was the sus­tained at­ten­dance at these va­ca­tion re­vi­sion pro­grammes?”

Be­fore the pro­gramme was im­ple­ment­ed, Haynes said the UNC called for clear de­liv­er­ables in the pro­gramme.

“How are you as­sess­ing whether or not these stu­dents have at­tained key com­pe­ten­cies to be suc­cess­ful at sec­ondary school? How are you mea­sur­ing key tar­gets? How were you dis­ag­gre­gat­ing stu­dents and get­ting some kind of tar­get­ed help? Ab­solute­ly, there was no met­ric to mea­sure. There have been no dis­cus­sions since as to whether or not these stu­dents are now able to be suc­cess­ful at a sec­ondary school ed­u­ca­tion.”

Ahead of the re­open­ing of schools next week, Haynes said a lot of ques­tions re­main unan­swered.

“Have we ac­com­plished any­thing, or are we kick­ing the can down lat­er on? What we are see­ing as a pop­u­la­tion again, is the in­abil­i­ty of a Gov­ern­ment to plan and ex­e­cute tar­get­ed in­ter­ven­tions with the prob­lems fac­ing our sec­tor.”

Haynes said the pop­u­la­tion must be told whether or not ed­u­ca­tion poli­cies are suc­ceed­ing.

“We are see­ing that the in­ter­ven­tions are not re­al­ly in­tend­ed to achieve its pur­pose. It is re­al­ly to ma­m­aguy the na­tion.”

Un­der Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s ad­min­is­tra­tion, Haynes said they have been dis­man­tling pro­grammes that have been work­ing.

Ef­forts to con­tact Gads­by-Dol­ly yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful, as she did not an­swer calls nor read a What­sapp mes­sage sent on the is­sue.