All systems are in place for pupils to write the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) exam on Thursday.
According to the Ministry of Education, a total of 18, 240 pupils will write the exam on May 4, comprising 9,193 boys and 9,047 girls.
The exam, which is estimated to be three and a half hours, is set to begin at 8.30 am. It includes a mid-morning snack break.
This is slightly more compared to last year, when a total of 18,180 pupils from 543 public and private primary schools sat the exam on May 5.
Even though the exam date was moved from March to May five years ago, education stakeholders are once again urging the Ministry of Education (MOE) to revert to the old system where the SEA was administered towards the end of the second term of the academic year.
This they claimed, would allow both teachers and students a little more time to complete the curriculum without rushing after the Easter break.
Extending best of luck to the exam students, president of the National Parent Teacher Association (NPTA) Zena Ramatali thanked teachers and parents for the sacrifices and hard work that went into preparing the students for this national exam.
Advising parents “not to stick around” after they dropped off their child/children on Thursday, Ramatali urged, “Go and relax, let them do what they have to do. We don’t want our children to feel any undue pressure. As parents, we have to understand that this is not the end of their education and that one exam does not determine their future.”
She also appealed to parents to stop pushing students to excel in order to achieve a placement at a “prestige” school.
Ramatali said, “Please do not make your child feel like he/she did not do well if they do not attain a place at what is considered to be a prestige school. Education is free and you can do well wherever you are placed.”
Adding that the NPTA was hopeful that all schools could one-day be referred to as prestige schools, Ramatali focused on the period after exams as she said many persons often stayed away.
She urged persons to attend school so that educators can begin helping them to prepare for the transition from primary to secondary school.
Acknowledging that students were spared the hassle of having to undergo testing via the Continuous Assessment Component (CAC), Ramatali said her organisation was interested in how this year’s exam format would directly impact on the successes of the students.
She said feedback and statistics were needed to determine the literacy and numeracy ability of the students, so that strategies could be devised on how it could be improved.
President of the T&T Unified Teachers Association (TTUTA), Lynsley Doodhai praised the removal of the CAC as he said it had been a stressful element for teachers and students.
He too agreed the timing of the exam was something which needed to be reviewed as the current timeline did not allow for, “Much more to be done by teachers to prepare students.”
Doodhai pointed to the fact that school reopened on April 24 following the two-week Easter break and with the SEA exam scheduled for Thursday, he said, “Many teachers and students did not have an Easter vacation as they were in school preparing for the exam. This means that both sets of persons are over-worked and this is something which we are extremely concerned about.”
Suggesting the exam revert to being held in March, Doodhai urged parents to let children relax a bit during the days leading up to the exam.
He said simple things like playing a video game or watching a show on television can serve to reduce stress levels and the building anxiety.
2017 SEA FIRST NATIONAL EXAM
Thursday’s SEA exam is the first national exam to be administered since the ministry removed the CAC in April 2016.
Introduced in 2012, it was envisioned the CAC would be one way to diversify the SEA syllabus.
Areas in which Standard Five pupils were assessed included dance, drama, agricultural science, citizen development, visual and performing arts, music, creative arts, physical education and ethics/character development.
The SEA replaced the Common Entrance (CE) exam in 2001 and unlike the CE which was a multiple choice examination, SEA is a written exam testing students in three areas—Language Arts, Mathematics and Creative Writing.
In April 2016, Education Minister Anthony Garcia, justified the CAC’s removal as he said it was detrimental to both students and teachers.
The removal of the CAC meant the SEA exam structure would revert to its former composition with Math accounting for 50 per cent, Language Arts for 30 per cent and Creative Writing for 20 per cent of the grading system.
In December 2016, the MOE also announced there would be no National Test for 2017.
Usually administered at the end of the school year, all Standard One and Standard Three students attending public and private primary schools were required to write the National Test.
It was an annual standardised exam covering Language Arts, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies.
The objectives of the examination included gathering information for decision-making at the school, district and national levels, identifying areas of the system that require further investigation, identifying national norms, comparing students’ performance by school and educational districts and tracking students’ progress through school.
