Ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers say they are con­cerned about the type of ques­tions that ap­pear in cer­tain sec­tions of the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tion.

Speak­ing at a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) of Par­lia­ment Fri­day on So­cial Ser­vices and Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion: An in­quiry in­to the un­der­per­for­mance at the na­tion’s schools and the ad­e­qua­cy of the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion (SSSD), Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry Schools Prin­ci­pals’ As­so­ci­a­tion (NAPSPA) Monique Sci­pio-Daniel said she no­ticed a change in the struc­ture of the place­ment ex­am­i­na­tion.

“I used to teach a SEA class for sev­er­al years. At that point, it was sim­ply a place­ment ex­am. Chil­dren wrote the ex­ams and passed for the school of their choice, or if not they were sent to a school in their area. But what we have seen over the years, it’s al­most as if it’s a com­pe­ti­tion to see which writer can write the best ques­tion or the hard­er ques­tion for the chil­dren,” she ex­plained.

Ac­cord­ing to Sci­pio-Daniel, ques­tions that were pre­vi­ous­ly in sec­tion three have now ap­peared in sec­tion two, and those des­ig­nat­ed for sec­tion two have moved to sec­tion one. She ex­plained that this change has caused pupils to spend more time com­plet­ing the ex­am. The NAPSPA pres­i­dent al­so not­ed that pupils were now re­quired to write out their an­swers for sec­tion one, which de­vi­at­ed from the orig­i­nal for­mat. She added that she had in­quired with the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil about the dif­fi­cul­ty of the ques­tions, point­ing to the ex­am writ­ers as a po­ten­tial source of con­cern.

“Most of the writ­ers of the ques­tions come from sec­ondary schools, but we have some pri­ma­ry school teach­ers who al­so write ques­tions and they are bound not to share. But those pri­ma­ry school teach­ers teach in a school so if they write a ques­tion they are go­ing to en­sure the chil­dren in front of them know the ques­tions,” she claimed.

Sci­pio-Daniel al­leged those par­tic­u­lar pri­ma­ry school pupils en­ter the ex­am room with a leg up.

“Cer­tain schools en­cour­age their teach­ers to be­come writ­ers and once you are cor­rect­ing over a pe­ri­od of years and you make your name known to CXC, you can write the ques­tions,” she said.

She said some of the ques­tions the Stan­dard Five pupils would not learn un­til Forms Three or Four.

Pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Prin­ci­pals of Pub­lic Sec­ondary Schools Shar­lene Hicks-Rae­burn said there was an aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance dis­par­i­ty among the chil­dren en­ter­ing Form One.

Mar­tin Lum Kin, Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) claimed some peo­ple ben­e­fit­ed from the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem as it had be­come a big busi­ness.

“You have those who write these mock pa­pers (specif­i­cal­ly for SEA) and they pub­lish these and the schools are pur­chas­ing them to do mock ex­am­i­na­tions. You have book­sellers as well as pub­lish­ers, who will gain from it, there are per­sons who would some­times give lessons who are not teach­ers and there are po­lit­i­cal gains from it too,” he claimed.

Pres­i­dent of the Book­sellers As­so­ci­a­tion, Vivek Char­ran, de­nied the claims made by Lum Kin.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day, he said TTUTA was sad­ly mis­in­formed as his mem­bers were not “ben­e­fit­ing” off the SEA ex­ams.

Char­ran said there were dif­fer­ent lev­els and ver­sions of prac­tice tests and that was ben­e­fi­cial be­cause it showed where in the cur­ricu­lum the pupils had reached.

“I don’t think in any way that (prac­tice tests) is break­ing the law or some kind of rack­et,” he said.

The Book­sellers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent said it was good that teach­ers were cre­at­ing ques­tions as he said it was in the best in­ter­est of pupils.

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said SEA re­mained a place­ment ex­am­i­na­tion and that had not changed. She said the is­sues raised had more to do with com­pet­i­tive­ness.

“This has less to do with the struc­ture of ques­tions than an un­healthy sense of com­pe­ti­tion, fu­elled, in many cas­es, by par­ents’ de­sire that their chil­dren must not on­ly pass for their first choice school but place first in the ex­am­i­na­tion. I have seen stu­dents who did ex­cel­lent­ly in SEA drenched in tears, and de­pressed, be­cause they didn’t come in the top three in the coun­try,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

She added that they en­gaged CXC years ago about al­le­ga­tions of stu­dents be­ing privy to ex­am ques­tions.

“Al­so very dis­turb­ing has been the very neg­a­tive and di­vi­sive na­tion­al dis­course that be­came par for the course over the years, with racial con­no­ta­tions sur­round­ing the is­sue of ex­am dis­hon­esty, as well as per­ceived aca­d­e­m­ic su­pe­ri­or­i­ty,” she said.

The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter said this was one of the rea­sons the for­mat of SEA re­sults had been changed to a dig­i­tal for­mat, re­liev­ing pupils of the pres­sure of re­ceiv­ing re­sults in the glare of the pub­lic.