A plan to bring back the Continuous Assessment Component (CAC) to Trinidad and Tobago’s primary education system has earned cautious backing from the nation’s largest teachers’ union and the national parent-teacher body, both of which warn that policy missteps that doomed the first iteration of the framework must be avoided for the initiative to deliver on its promises.
The Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers’ Association (TTUTA) first vice president Adesh Dwarika shared the union’s position in a recent phone interview with local outlet the Express, following the release of a memorandum from Education Ministry Chief Education Officer Peter Smith that launched virtual public consultations with primary school principals, teachers, and parents of Standards Two and Three students on the planned CAC relaunch.
Dwarika noted that TTUTA leadership held a meeting with Education Ministry officials several weeks prior to the consultation announcement, where Education Minister Dr Michael Dowlath confirmed the CAC would be returning to the national education system. The union had previously pushed for educator and administrator inclusion in consultation talks, a demand that has since been reflected in the ministry’s current outreach process.
“TTUTA has no objection to the policy if it genuinely strengthens the education system, enhances teaching and learning experiences for students, and reduces unnecessary pressure on young learners,” Dwarika explained. “But we cannot ignore the mistakes that led to its cancellation the first time around, and we must address those flaws up front.”
When CAC was first rolled out as part of the national Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA), it required teachers to deliver instruction in creative arts and a range of skill-based modules that many primary educators were not trained to teach, Dwarika said. A second critical flaw was the lack of standardized grading: assessments were scored independently at each school, leading to inconsistent, highly subjective results that undermined the credibility of the framework. The policy also created unmanageable additional workload for already stretched teaching staff, he added.
To fix these longstanding issues, TTUTA has proposed several key reforms ahead of the relaunch. Dwarika recommended rolling out a system of centralized grading moderation modeled after the School Based Assessment (SBA) process used for Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations, which would create consistent, fair grading standards across all schools. The union has also proposed reducing the weight of the final high-stakes SEA examination to offset the added workload of continuous assessment, framing the adjustment as a way to balance formative evaluation with systemwide accountability.
Dwarika emphasized that TTUTA’s demands are rooted in a commitment to improving outcomes for students and supporting educators, not opposing policy change. “We are not obstructionists. We want what is best for our students, who are our nation’s future, but we also need to protect our teachers from unfair emotional and physical burnout. Unreasonable burdens are the last thing any successful policy needs,” he said.
Walter Stewart, president of the National Parent Teacher Association (NPTA), echoed TTUTA’s cautious support in a statement shared via WhatsApp with the Express. Stewart noted that the current SEA framework relies entirely on a single high-stakes examination that only captures a student’s performance on one specific day, under high-pressure conditions. While the SEA provides useful data on a student’s academic readiness, it fails to capture the full range of a child’s creativity, talent and long-term potential, he argued.
“CAC will give us a more holistic portrait of a student’s achievement, growth and development over time, and will better highlight the skills and competencies that act as building blocks for long-term success,” Stewart said. Like TTUTA, Stewart stressed that the policy’s success hinges on three core prerequisites: clear national assessment standards, consistent and adequate teacher training, and transparent mechanisms to guarantee equity and fairness across all schools. Stewart added that the NPTA supports the framework because it centers student well-being, reduces unnecessary testing stress, and prioritizes meaningful learning over high-stakes performance.
As of press time, the Express reports that Education Minister Dr Michael Dowlath has not responded to requests for comment on the associations’ positions.
The current push to bring back CAC comes seven years after the policy was scrapped by the then-government in 2016. In April of that year, then Education Minister Anthony Garcia announced that the cohort of students sitting SEA that May would be the last to complete the CAC component. The cabinet’s decision followed a five-week national public consultation on education reform held earlier that year, which collected feedback through in-person public forums and online surveys. Consultation respondents widely criticized the original CAC as a poorly planned framework that placed unfair, undue stress on teachers, students and families, leading to its swift disbandment.