March 21, 2016: Upon investigation, the Ministry of Education has found that claims made in a newspaper article entitled “Ministry loses CAC music scores” are not true. It was reported that students’ scores were lost, “mixed up” or “cannot be located” thereby compromising the integrity of the 2016 Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) examinations.
The Ministry states that the allegations, specific to the Music part of the CAC, are not accurate as these assessments were fully implemented during the period January 16th to July 1st 2015, and music scores have in fact been uploaded since the last academic year and can be viewed by schools that have access to the online platform. Any requests for Music scores at this time, were made to ensure that they were included in moderation packages so that the staff of schools who are proceeding on Easter vacation would not have to be contacted during the vacation to provide "MISSING SCORES".
The term “MISSING SCORES” was coined by officials of the Ministry of Education to refer to scenarios where scores have not been uploaded for the following reasons:
- Scores were not uploaded before the deadline (an assessment schedule is circulated to all primary schools at the beginning of the academic year).
- Irregularities due to non-compliance with the guidelines (specified during face to face training and in the manual). These can include loss of data because the session “timed out” during upload; not saving the data; not sending the file to the Ministry of Education.
- Students were absent; dropped out; withdrew from the class; transferred from one institution to another; are repeating Standard Four or re-sitting Standard Five. A tracking process is subsequently implemented to verify whether the student participated in the assessment to explain the “missing score”.
The term “Missing Scores” does not mean data was lost, but is being tracked or validated.
Additionally, it is pertinent to note that no scores that have been uploaded by schools are in any way “mixed up”. Firstly, the online platform is designed so that each school is assigned a centre code for which there are two levels of clearance – the administrator and the user. No other personnel apart for the designated officers or personnel from Information and Communication Technology Division can interface with data. Secondly, the structure within which the data is organised has specific fields that clearly indicated what data is to be uploaded, and reports can be generated for verification with the master sheets that are provided.
The online platform is developed and managed by the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) as part of their assessment services to Trinidad and Tobago. Thus data capture and processing for CAC uses a platform developed similarly as for CSEC and CAPE level examinations.
As part of the quality assurance process for the SEA, the Ministry of Education has requested that principals check all instances of missing scores for students identified on the online registration system. Further principals have been requested to ensure that samples of students' work are submitted for moderation by CXC.
For further information please contact:
The Corporate Communications Division
Ministry of Education
868-628-1581