This year’s Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) exam was tailor-made for the 18,240 students who wrote the exam in T&T, so the irregularities detected during the exam would not have occurred in exam scripts distributed to other islands.
Education Minister Anthony Garcia said it was done in this manner to ensure the exam was “transparent and above reproach.”
Hours after the exam concluded on Thursday, Garcia revealed that three questions worth a total of four marks had been flagged as irregularities in the Maths and Language Arts components.
Ministry of Education officials said although the questions will be removed from the marking scheme, students will still be able to score maximum marks.
The exams were prepared by the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) and administered by the Ministry of Education.
President of the National Parent Teacher Association (NPTA) Zena Ramatali, who described the irregularities as simple mistakes, is calling for an investigation into how the errors were made to ensure those responsible are made to account.
A similar call was made by president of the T&T Unified Teachers Association (TTUTA) Lynsley Doodhai who said: “These mistakes are inexcusable and should never have happened.”
Ramatali and Doodhai agreed that CXC should be held responsible as they prepared the exam scripts.
Speaking outside the Ministry of Education in Port-of-Spain yesterday, Doodhai said: “As far as TTUTA is concerned, due diligence was not followed and there was no proper oversight with respect to proof reading and editing of the exam paper.
“Some children may have spent more time on these questions, which meant less time to answer other questions and this would have had an emotional effect on children who may have become distraught and upset over not being able to answer them.”
Meanwhile, Education Minister Anthony Garcia said his ministry wasn’t at fault in the issue of the three errors— but the ministry will be meeting the Caribbean Examination Council to review the process of exams.
Replying to Opposition queries on the error in Parliament yesterday, Garcia said the ministry doesn’t handle construction of the SEA papers, but the CXC does.
Garcia, who said he wasn’t aware of pupils being traumatised by the issue , however, added that the ministry needed to look at the final papers to prevent recurrence of errors .
Garcia clashed with former education minister Dr Tim Gopeesingh who argued that the ministry’s chief education officer has major input into the exams. Garcia said the CEO attended meetings of the CXC to look at all exams.
With reporting by Gail Alexander
