Making the Case: We should have canceled SEA this year. Going forward, let’s ABOLISH it.
Dear Anthony Garcia,
If this was a normal year, all students who completed standard five would have already had uniforms purchased and they no doubt would have feelings of excitement and some nervousness about their new school placement. But, this is not a normal year and standard five students, at least 80% of them are currently unaware of where they would be placed for the upcoming school year because the Secondary Entrance Assessment will be held on August 20th. Students have been out of school for approximately four months due to the global Covid-19 pandemic causing students to miss approximately one-third of the school year.
SEA, formerly Common Entrance is an outdated colonial tool and a sorting mechanism that should be abolished immediately. This is beyond the fact that standard five students are back in school by choice to prepare for the exam given that there was no solid technology infrastructure in place to rapidly adjust to the need for online/virtual learning/schooling. Nevertheless, we are here, and while the exam will go on, we missed a huge opportunity to create equity within the nation’s education system and by extension the nation.
Let’s engage in an imaginative exercise. Scenario: The exam is canceled? How do we address the issue of placement? Who goes to school where?
While 80% goes through the front door, for the denominational schools (assisted schools), a select 20% is allowed through the backdoor. The denominational schools of all major religions in Trinidad and Tobago (Christian, Hindu, and Muslim) can select anyone for special placement in this 20%.
Essentially, if you are good with the local parish priest, pundit or imam, your contributions are stellar, and you know the familiar strings to pull you can secure yourself in the 20%, whether at a CIC type school, a convent, an ASJA, or a Mahasabha school. Yes, a granny singing in the choir for the last 40 years and pulling double duty serving as a Eucharistic minister can be rewarded with a placement for her progeny due to her faithfulness and devotion. Indeed, an entrance is guaranteed based on how many poojas are kept that are calls over the pundit over to plant jhandis and conduct prayers for every auspicious occasion. I am sure it is not hard to find the Muslim example of such in our multi-religious society, of the outstanding family that religious attends jummah and faithfully fulfills his zakat obligations, placement in this 20% awaits such.
Now that I have lost 20 percent of you, including our 1% and we know who they are, allow the 80% of us to engage in our imaginative exercise.
There are a multitude of solutions on how we can place students, including the use of a random assignment algorithm that places students based on various criteria. In essence, a formula that perhaps assigns various weights per criteria and takes student/parental choice into consideration.
While this can be a temporary fix, we need to dramatically overhaul the education system in Trinidad and Tobago, and this begins with abolishing and ending this classist sorting device. In 2003, George Allen, a newspaper columnist wrote,
“Many children of lower-income families were nudged aside in the application of the powers conferred by the state-church arrangement, and those receiving the head start under the Concordat were instead sons and daughters of far better-positioned middle- and upper-middle-income families. It was clearly unjust and deprived many a bright schoolchild of a deserved chance at upward mobility. Government should and must move with dispatch to deal with this cruel absurdity of privilege conferred. There must be a rethink of the Concordat, not to see in what way it can be improved, but rather how quickly it can be consigned to the dustbin of history”
This is a pre-independence and outdated colonial legacy that places a stranglehold on the development of the education system. Given that 20% of us appreciates this privilege afforded to the government-assisted schools, this 20% can opt to increase their numbers to 100% selection of their choosing on the condition that public funds should not be used for a semi-quasi religious education, or we equally fund schools, bringing all government schools to a level of equity on the principle of every creed and race finding an equal.
While there is more to be hashed out here, SEA is an artificially designed barrier from an era when there were not enough schools. Education for All gave secondary school placements to all students.
Clearly, in the middle of a global pandemic with matters of life and death ever-present and public health hanging in the balance, it is still very important that we sort children so we can ensure them a place in the future status quo.
Respectfully,
K. Baird,
P.S. Next time I will give this to your brother to deliver personally, but I decided at the last minute that it can be addressed to you as well as an open letter of sorts.
