Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Thou­sands of 11-plus chil­dren will be en­ter­ing sec­ondary school in Sep­tem­ber in a new en­vi­ron­ment with un­fa­mil­iar faces, while a few will re­turn to their old class­rooms and teach­ers to speed­i­ly im­prove their scores of 30 per cent or less.

This year 17,615 pupils wrote the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tion. Of that fig­ure, 16,964 se­cured places at sec­ondary schools through­out the coun­try, while the re­main­ing 651 have to en­dure the men­tal stress and hor­ror of re-sit­ting the ex­am. Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, on Fri­day, laud­ed the per­for­mance of Trinidad and To­ba­go stu­dents, say­ing it was of a high­er qual­i­ty than those in oth­er ter­ri­to­ries in the Caribbean. He said it was be­cause of the col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­forts of the Gov­ern­ment, par­ents, teach­ers and stu­dents.

This 3.7 per cent of the un­placed SEA pop­u­la­tion for 2009 might go un­no­ticed in com­par­i­son to the ma­jor­i­ty who have the chance to move ahead on the aca­d­e­m­ic lad­der. A close re­view of the SEA re­sults on the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion's (MOE) Web site showed that al­most 40 per cent of the pupils of the Nel­son Street Boys' RC School in Port-of-Spain have to re-sit the ex­am. Of the 58 boys who wrote the ex­am, 22 of them were un­suc­cess­ful.

Ac­cord­ing to the MOE, the over­all 3.7 per cent scored 30 per cent or less in the ex­am. At Ari­ma New Gov­ern­ment and Ari­ma Pres­by­ter­ian schools, 14.2 per cent and 15.1 per cent of the pupils have to re-sit, re­spec­tive­ly. Out of the 95 who wrote the ex­am at Ed­in­burgh Gov­ern­ment, 11 were un­placed. Mean­while, five out of 59 at the Ca­roni Hin­du School and three out of 20 at the Buc­coo Gov­ern­ment were not placed.

When com­bined, nine out of 118 pupils of the Bel­mont Boys' and Girls' RC have to re-sit the ex­am, while the on­ly two who at­tend­ed the Cas­cade School for the Deaf have to re­peat the ex­am. Many will be an­tic­i­pat­ing awards and recog­ni­tion lat­er on for plac­ing in the first 100 or 200 as top achiev­ers in the na­tion and now that the Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion is un­der way, some suc­cess­ful pupils will be re­ward­ed with ex­pen­sive va­ca­tions, high-tech gad­gets, or cash.

Some re­peaters will be scold­ed or forced to com­mence ex­tra lessons with the hope that they will do bet­ter next year. When the prin­ci­pal of Nel­son Street Boys' was con­tact­ed for a com­ment on the school's SEA re­sults, she said, "I have just been as­signed to this school and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion would bet­ter be able to give you that in­for­ma­tion."