The appalling results of the SEA examination are a consequence of the mistakes made by the Ministry of Health.

That 50 per cent failure rate is a direct result of the prolonged closure of our schools, one of the longest in the world. The failure is not the fault of the Ministry of Education or the teachers. They followed the faulty advice of the technical people headed by the CMO in the Ministry of Health.

They cannot say they were not warned. Between February 2020 and February 2022, I wrote 18 articles warning about the expected consequences of the lockdown of the schools. I was not alone. Drs Ken Nicholls and Joel Teelucksingh, Mrs Diana Mahabir-Wyatt and various parents and commentators repeatedly made the same points: School lockdowns were not needed and would have damaging consequences. Newspapers were full of horror headlines: “Widening gap between the haves and the have nots”; “Preschoolers continue to be left behind as online classes continue.”

The president of the Private Child Care Providers, Ms Nisha Hoyte, complained in December 2020 that, “we don’t even get a two minutes in the Prime Minister’s conference every other week.” Anglican Bishop Claude Berkley complained about the “extraordinary challenges” some parents were having with online teaching.

On April 18, 2021, a Sunday Guardian report by Anna-Lisa Paul and Raphael John-Lall spoke to the increasing desperation being experienced by children because of the closure of physical school and the onset of the virtual mamaguyisn: “the situation has continued to escalate with younger children self-harming, a higher than usual level student absenteeism and the secondary school drop-out increasing as children take up jobs to help their families survive.” The PRO of the National Council of the Parents-Teacher Association, Shamila Raheem, reported that one school in the Caroni Education District “had recorded a drop-out rate of between eight and ten per cent among its secondary students between January to present.”

On April 28, 2020, I wrote the first of the 18 columns warning of the dire effects of locking down schools. I said: “COVID affects children in two ways. It makes them sick and it locks them down and the second is by far the worse.

It is not the virus that is the problem with children. It is the lockdown that is the problem.

“Education is the big problem over age two. School is so much more than an academic exercise.

It’s where you make friends; join groups; learn how to interact with others; exercise; develop self-control, self-esteem etc. Remote schooling is not the same.

“We don’t know what the effect of exposing children to four to six hours of screen time a day will be. Three months ago, we were recommending no more than two hours a day. How will this affect their developing eyes and brains? “What about the parents who have to supervise their children, clean, cook, do office work and take care of the younger children? What will be the effect on teachers? And what about those parents who have no computer? Will their children be left behind? “All of these things are anxiety-producing but perhaps not more so than the older children preparing for SEA, CAPE or CXC.

There are signs that the delay in these exams is producing “feelings of worry, fear, frustration and depression” in 75 per cent of CAPE students, according to research done by UWI final year student, Leah-Angelene Mowlah.

We know from studies done on final year university students who experienced the 1980, 1990 and 2008 economic recessions, that they all experienced increased morbidity and early mortality and do less well economically as a group, than their companions who graduated at the expected time.

“COVID must not be looked at as solely a health and economic issue. It is also an educational burden and while we have to get the balance right, we need to get back to the new normal as soon as possible and opening schools should be a priority.”

This was written in 2020.

Two years later, on 22/02/2022, I warned that, “The faulty advice from the MoH to “Stay safe and keep your child inside!” persists to this day. We continue to hear the Minister asking parents whether, “it is worth the risk of taking their children out?”

“The consequence of this nonsense is that thousands of children have been prevented from attending face-to-face school and from playing outside for almost two years, bringing tremendous physical and emotional harm to them, that will resonate through the future years to the detriment of society.

And all for nothing. All for nothing. All because the views of the wider society, from businessmen to labour leaders, from GPs to paediatricians, from parents to teachers and child psychologists, were not taken into account.”

Who will be held accountable for this?