The Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) is link­ing high lev­els of ex­am­i­na­tion ab­sen­teeism among CSEC and CAPE stu­dents to broad­er so­cio-emo­tion­al chal­lenges, warn­ing that the cri­sis is be­ing com­pound­ed by a crip­pled Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion (SSSD).

While con­grat­u­lat­ing stu­dents on their 2026 re­sults and com­mend­ing teach­ers and par­ents, TTUTA pres­i­dent Crys­tal Ashe raised se­ri­ous con­cerns over the re­port­ed no-shows for ex­am­i­na­tions. He as­sert­ed that stu­dent ab­sen­teeism is fre­quent­ly tied to cir­cum­stances re­quir­ing pro­fes­sion­al in­ter­ven­tion, yet the sys­tems de­signed to help them have been se­vere­ly un­der­mined.

Ac­cord­ing to Ashe, the SSSD is cur­rent­ly “se­vere­ly com­pro­mised,” cit­ing the non-re­new­al of con­tracts for crit­i­cal per­son­nel in­clud­ing so­cial work­ers and guid­ance coun­sel­lors, which has left the sup­port sys­tem “al­most non-ex­is­tent in some ar­eas.”