All clear for SEA on July 1 despite state of emergency

THE Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) exam will be held on July 1.

In confirming this at a virtual press conference on Tuesday, Education Minister Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly would have brought an end to months of uncertainty among Standard 5 students and their parents as to whether or not the exam would be held given the pandemic and the Government calling a state of emergency.

Gadsby-Dolly also presented her ministry’s operational preparedness plan for the much-anticipated examination.

She said 19,656 students are registered to write this year's exam of which, 18,592 will write it in Trinidad and 1,064 in Tobago. She said 9,905 of the students are males and 9,751 are females.

Director of the ministry's school supervision and management division, Naima Hosein, said the ministry sourced a supervisory staff of 3,919 to oversee the exam. “Supervisory staff stationed at schools comprise mainly teachers and administrators,” she said.

She added that of the 4,000 covid19 vaccines assigned to the ministry, 3,635 teachers and school administrators – principals and vice-principals – have been vaccinated to date.

“This Saturday, an additional 500 teachers or administrators who are willing to volunteer to supervise the SEA, will be vaccinated.”

Gadsby-Dolly said roughly 1,100 administrators who identified themselves to be working for SEA at the time of the vaccination rollout, have already been vaccinated.

Hosein said that usually, testers are assigned to supervise at schools they do not work in, but this year, teachers will be given the option of testing in their own school or another.

“Due to the pandemic, many teachers felt more comfortable to supervise at their own respective schools," she explained.

There are 184 monitors this year from the ministry's various divisions including curriculum, planning, educational research and evaluation, and human resource. Hosein said monitors have already visited exam centres across the country to ensure compliance with protocols, ahead of the exam.

This year, 445 concessions have been approved for students identified as having a need that puts them at a disadvantage for writing the exam, including braille and large print for the visually-impaired and a sign language interpreter, for the hearing-impaired.

The ministry also detailed protocols in place for parents, testers, and students on the compound at examination centres.

Education House Officer Dr Amanda Solomon said each of the eight educational districts — seven in Trinidad and one in Tobago — is assigned one medical doctor and two nurses. She said nurses have also done in-person visits to schools to ensure health protocols are being met.

“For both SEA and Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) exams, screening questions will be asked at the door.” She said the ministry is asking parents to prepare children to answer these questions to assess any the personal risk.

Students are asked to walk with their own sanitisers, and masks must be worn during exams.

Each centre has a seating manifest detailing where each student will be seated for the exam. Solomon said this will also aid in quick and efficient contact tracing, should the need arise.

Centres have also implemented a quarantine or isolation area to accommodate anyone exhibiting symptoms. If a student is identified as exhibiting symptoms, his/her parent will be contacted to transport the child to the nearest public health facility for assessment and the school will be sanitised.

Gadsby-Dolly said if any student displays symptoms and is unable to do the exam on the day, or if they are in quarantine and cannot be allowed on the compound, the make-up date for the exam is July 21.

“Parents would have to contact principals and indicate the circumstances so that students can be accommodated for the make-up exam.” She said there is no make-up date for CXC students.

“If a (CXC) student is similarly circumstanced then they would have to do their exam at the next available sitting which would be in January or June 2022, depending on the subject.”

SEA students will also be granted an opportunity to defer to next year.

Speaking on this issue, the ministry's chief education officer Lisa David-Henry said the ministry is cognizant of the challenges by students hence the deferral facility, but she warned that a request did not automatically mean approval.

Parents would have had to submit their requests in writing by May 17, stating the reasons they wanted a deferral. School administrators, in consultation with teachers, would have reviewed these requests and made a final recommendation to the ministry on whether or not the request should be granted.

She said that after being guided by class sizes and schools’ ability to accommodate students next year, 176 out of 183 deferral requests were approved.

Henry-David also said infrastructural issues were reported to the ministry by principals and repairs have been carried out. She said when construction stopped in May, due to covid19 restrictions, the ministry reached out to the Ministry of Health for a variance of the restriction and repair work at specific schools resumed on June 10. That work continued into this week.

She said the ministry has been assured by contractors that all works will be completed by June 28.

“All efforts have been made to ensure the safety of our students and staff as they engage in the examination process,” she said.

The SEA exam was initially set for June 10, however on May 20, Gadsby-Dolly announced the date would be shifted to July 1 owing to the rising number of covid19 cases.