Three questions totalling four marks are to be removed from the exam marking scheme scripts of this year’s Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) exam, after irregularities in the maths and language a rts components were “flagged” yesterday.
The irregularities were said to have occurred during the production of the exam scripts and Education Minister Anthony Garcia will discuss the issue when his team hands over the exam scripts to officials of the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) today.
Garcia made the comment yesterday as he applauded all officials who worked hard to ensure the smooth administration of the SEA exam yesterday. The errors were the only issues related to the exam, he said at a hastily-arranged press conference at the ministry’s Port-of-Spain head office, hours after the exam for 18,240 primary school students concluded at 546 centres across both islands.
Garcia admitted the irregularities could very well have caused some “undue stress” among the students and their parents. In the interest of transparency and fair play, Garcia assured that the removal of the three questions would not impact students’ performance nor hamper anyone from scoring total marks in each of the three sections.
Many students polled yesterday agreed the maths was “challenging,” while the language arts was “easy” and the creative writing was “nice.”
CXC is responsible for the preparation of the exam while the MOE is tasked with its administration.
By 4 pm yesterday, chief education officer Harrilal Seecharan said they had begun collecting the exam scripts for packaging before CXC collected them to take back to Barbados today.
He explained, “In the mathematics paper, we had one question where the dimension of a triangle was switched. In looking at the question, we found it would not have made a difference to the answer.”
However, he said, “In the language arts paper, there were two questions which required words to be underlined to facilitate the responses of students. The underlines were left out and that would have impacted on how students responded.”
With mechanisms in place to address such occurrences, Seecharan added, “These three items in the exam will be dealt with utilising a standard procedure which CXC will utilise in that any item in the exam which may put students at a disadvantage will not be scored.
“I want to assure students and parents that those concerns which were raised with us through our monitors will be addressed and they can be assured that no student will be put at a disadvantage.”
Pressed to say if ministry officials did not review the script before it is presented to student, Seecharan said, “We have a process where reviews are done by the ministry. However, no one in the ministry sees the final version of the test so that we were only aware of any issue after the exams were opened at the level of the school.”
Saying such irregularities have occurred in other exams, Seecharan said there were procedures in place to address these situations.
Urging the students to relax and enjoy the nine-weeks ahead of them now, both Garcia and Seecharan appealed to parents to send children to school as activities have been planned to help them transition from primary to secondary school.
Garcia said it was important to ensure that students do not feel “like they lost out,” as they had invested many hours of study and hard work and now needed to feel “comforted and not disadvantaged.”
Asked about the probability that a make-up exam might be on the cards, Seecharan said, “When we talk about removing items from a test, part of the review process also involves looking at how students perform. If it is felt that students are disadvantaged in any way, then there are statistical adjustments that can be done.”
