EDUCATION Minister Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly on Friday praised the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) for its swift action earlier to allay pupils' fears after the leakage of CSEC Mathematics Paper 2.
She was speaking to reporters at a Heliconia Foundation event in St Clair.
The CXC at a regional news briefing via Zoom on Friday announced it was scrapping paper 2 which pupils had sat the day before and would instead assess their grades based on their existing school-based assessment (SBA) marks plus the Paper 1 exam (60 multiple choice questions) which is due in mid-June.
Gadsby-Dolly said, "I think CXC reacted very quickly, very decisively, to ensure there was a solution to the challenge that faced us. I'm glad for that because it actually puts the students' minds to rest about exactly what is going to happen."
She said the leak had been unfortunate.
"We have asked CXC to give us some details of what would have happened, so that we in our own countries are able to safeguard.
"There are many persons who guard the papers very, very closely. We have armed vehicles and armoured vehicles escorting all of the papers from the airport and we use vaulting and so on. All of us do that." She said the region's authorities want to know exactly what happened to guard against any future recurrence. "As the saying goes, 'when your neighbour house on fire, wet yours.'" She was looking forward to insights from the CXC so as to help secure the situation in TT.
CXC registrar Wayne Wesley said on Friday the leak had been traced to an examination centre in Jamaica.
Newsday asked if she had got any feedback about the Paper 2 cancellation from teachers, parents and pupils in the few hours since the CXC briefing.
Gadsby-Dolly said, "It's very early, so I really have not heard any response from them.
"What I can say is that when we met with CXC today quite a few (education) ministers from across the region were present and I think all felt very satisfied with how CXC had handled the situation and communicated with the public about what was happening."
She said the last known leak of CXC papers had been in 2008. It was important in the current case to find out what went wrong, she said, so that each territory could improve their security arrangements.
Reporters asked if pupils were being distracted by criminal incidents such as an injured man recently escaping from assailants by running into Providence Girls' school in Belmont. Gadsby-Dolly replied, pupils faced many distractions, including social media. "The world is not the same as it was.
"So, I am concerned as a mother of children and their ability to focus on the important things because of the number of distractions."
It was vital for parents to get their children involved in activities that would encourage them to become ready learners, she said
"The fact is that this is the world and they have to exist in it, so we have to give them the tools to be able to cope and minimise the distractions, whether it be the crime situation, whether it be the socia
