The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has caused a se­ri­ous but un­der­stand­able dis­rup­tion in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, by lead­ing to the tem­po­rary clo­sure of learn­ing in­sti­tu­tions world­wide.

This has af­fect­ed the vast ma­jor­i­ty of the stu­dent pop­u­la­tion, and it is thus, with great wor­ry, that we write this ar­ti­cle, hop­ing to con­vey our con­cerns on this is­sue.

Al­though we may not be able to speak for the in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dent body, we do wish to shed light on the dilem­mas cur­rent­ly be­ing faced by stu­dents of the Caribbean who are writ­ing the up­com­ing CAPE and CSEC ex­am­i­na­tions (Form 5s and Form 6s).

Re­cent­ly, the num­ber of COVID-19 pa­tients has sky­rock­et­ed—a sce­nario which was quite unan­tic­i­pat­ed.

Pri­or to said surge in cas­es, the coun­try had un­der­gone a na­tion­wide lock­down un­til our lead­ers saw it vi­able to “re­open” the na­tion. The curve had plateaued and there was hence a grad­ual re­open­ing with such mea­sures in­clud­ing: re­vok­ing the es­sen­tial work­ers sta­tus, re­mov­ing iso­la­tion pro­to­col and sched­ul­ing schools to of­fi­cial­ly open on Sep­tem­ber 1.

Af­ter the re­cent dras­tic in­crease in COVID-19 cas­es, how­ev­er, the Gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed to push back the re­open­ing of schools. It was or­dered that all teach­ing in­sti­tu­tions re­main closed un­til De­cem­ber 31.

Stu­dents writ­ing the up­com­ing CAPE and CSEC ex­am­i­na­tions are trou­bled by the mere thought of our quick­ly ap­proach­ing ex­ams for many rea­sons that have re­sult­ed from this pan­dem­ic, as dis­cussed be­low.

First­ly, on­line class­es or­dered by the Gov­ern­ment to be im­ple­ment­ed by schools as an al­ter­nate form of teach­ing were la­belled as “vol­un­tary” on the part of the teach­ers.

Con­se­quent­ly, some class­es are not be­ing taught as teach­ers are not ob­lig­at­ed to ad­min­is­ter said on­line class­es.

On­line teach­ing al­so brought to light the fact that many teach­ers are not tech-savvy. This is­sue, which is not the fault of stu­dents, may have sig­nif­i­cant reper­cus­sions such as the in­abil­i­ty to com­plete the school cur­ricu­lum, lead­ing to in­suf­fi­cient prepa­ra­tion time for ex­am-writ­ing stu­dents and crit­i­cal strikes to the stu­dents’ con­fi­dence.

Af­ter con­duct­ing sev­er­al in­ter­views amongst our peers, we can state with con­fi­dence that most stu­dents are in­deed ex­pe­ri­enc­ing said dis­tress­es.

We humbly sug­gest that a pos­si­ble so­lu­tion to coun­ter­act these prob­lems would be by mak­ing the ex­e­cu­tion of these on­line class­es of­fi­cial­ly manda­to­ry, as well as by pos­si­bly con­duct­ing cours­es for teach­ers, in or­der to fa­mil­iarise them with the dig­i­tal in­ter­faces to be used to teach their stu­dents.

An­oth­er con­tribut­ing fac­tor to our dilem­ma un­der these cir­cum­stances, is the un­avail­abil­i­ty of tech­no­log­i­cal as­sets to some stu­dents.

Due to the clo­sure of schools, an on­line method of teach­ing has been im­ple­ment­ed by most schools, where­by class­es are op­er­at­ed dig­i­tal­ly, with the use of mod­ern day tech­nol­o­gy. This has re­sult­ed in tech­nol­o­gy be­ing an in­dis­pens­able tool, with­out which, stu­dents are un­able to ob­tain any kind of school­ing or class­es.

This method has not catered, how­ev­er, for some stu­dents who may not be able to af­ford such “lux­u­ries”, there­by leav­ing them sig­nif­i­cant­ly dis­ad­van­taged, es­pe­cial­ly with re­gard to prepar­ing for the up­com­ing CSEC and CAPE ex­am­i­na­tions.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, pre­vi­ous­ly of­fered text­books sup­plied by schools are no longer be­ing dis­trib­uted, al­so neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ing the ed­u­ca­tion­al well-be­ing of sev­er­al stu­dents, who may be writ­ing these up­com­ing ex­am­i­na­tions.

It is our hum­ble be­lief that this sit­u­a­tion can be al­le­vi­at­ed if the gov­ern­ment pro­vides fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to those who can­not af­ford these “lux­u­ries” and are hence un­able to at­tend these cru­cial class­es.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, we as stu­dents are faced with the in­evitable anx­i­ety and stress as­so­ci­at­ed with ex­ams such as CAPE and CSEC which have the po­ten­tial to, for want of a bet­ter phrase, make or break our fu­tures.

Due to the un­cer­tain­ty be­ing faced with re­gards to our ed­u­ca­tion­al well-be­ing, there has been an in­crease in these re­spons­es.

The cu­mu­la­tive pres­sures of high ex­pec­ta­tions, and more­over, fear of fail­ure, in an even more high pres­sure en­vi­ron­ment, in­flu­enced by the short­ened time frame to com­plete our ex­am syl­labus, the lack of teach­ing on the parts of some teach­ers, and even the lack of re­sources (to be used for our new stan­dard of on­line learn­ing), leaves a ra­tio­nal con­cern and fear in the hearts of stu­dents.

These cur­rent cir­cum­stances have led to the over­all de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of stu­dents’ men­tal health due to ex­ces­sive stress and frus­tra­tion.

We would like to pro­vide our hum­ble sug­ges­tions of ways to al­le­vi­ate the stress and un­ease be­ing faced by our stu­dents. Such sug­ges­tions in­clude:

• Push­ing back our CSEC and CAPE ex­am­i­na­tions by a ne­go­tiable month

• Min­imis­ing the ex­am scope to Pa­per Ones on­ly

• Less­en­ing the con­tent of the school-based as­sess­ments (SBAs)

We see these as ap­pro­pri­ate and vi­able so­lu­tions due to the cur­rent dilem­mas be­ing faced by stu­dents as a re­sult of the COVID-19 out­break.

We stu­dents re­quest that our su­pe­ri­ors see this sit­u­a­tion from the eyes of our dis­ad­van­taged stu­dent pop­u­la­tion.

We hope that those in au­thor­i­ty ac­knowl­edge and ad­dress some of our con­cerns, as well as take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion our pos­si­ble so­lu­tions dur­ing this un­fa­vor­able pe­ri­od for all.