As a parent of a current SEA student, I wish to express my dismay with the new format of the SEA examination. Much of it is based on subjectivity and not meritocracy, and should not be assessed at this level. The new format is even more burdensome and several aspects are rather nonsensical.
Imagine having to spend an entire two weeks rehearsing for a drama evaluation when students, teachers and parents do not have a clue about stage direction and acting. The same goes for the music evaluation. Students learned about pitch in a couple of sessions and were asked to sing a song that was scored from 1-10.
In addition, for Character Education, students are asked to either write a story, make a poster or a collage based on scenarios that encompasses themes such as respect or co-operation. The scenarios given tend to benefit the students who can write well because to create a poster based on the same scenario and which co-operates facts and shows national pride is not always possible.
At the same time I must lament the lack of science and social studies components in the curriculum. Fortunately, the SEA students did get to grow ochro plants as the science component. I say fortunately because this was just about all the formal science they would have learned in two whole years.
Also, most of today’s SEA students will not be able to name and identify previous Prime Ministers and Presidents, correctly state when T&T became a Republic or identify oceans and continents on a world map. Why? Because they are not required to learn these things.
Meanwhile, the SEA students who are struggling to read keep struggling because there is no longer time for remedial reading classes. The students who love to read simply don’t have time to read for pleasure right now.
Teachers are having difficulty to either complete the Mathematics and Language Arts syllabuses. And they simply can’t find time to focus on the problematic areas for students such as responding to poetry.
Where exactly are we headed with this? Who does this benefit? Not the teachers. Most of them are frustrated. Not the parents. Nope, not us. Many like myself have thrown up our arms and already said que sera sera. And certainly not our children. They are overwhelmed and zoning out.
Already—in January, with three months to go. The only people who seem to benefit are the folks at the Ministry of Education who like to boast about meaningless manipulated statistics based on the results.
To put it simply, it makes no sense to assess drama, music, art, physical education (how to throw a ball) and poster-making at the SEA level. It was a foolish idea that should not have been implemented and needs to be scrapped immediately.
The one aspect that I endorse is the focus on Creating Writing. But, writing skills must be taught and developed even from first year in a structured way using Fill-in-the-Blanks worksheets, daily morning discussions and journals, making up rhymes etc. This is simply not done.
The SEA exam should merely assess a student’s ability to perform basic numeracy skills, read, write, understand and think after at least seven years of formal education. Anything else is an attempt to dumb down the education system for the sake of grade inflation.
P Achong