Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath says this year’s Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) re­sults show “sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment”.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day at the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s (Am­cham) 8th An­nu­al Tech Hub Is­lands Sum­mit (T.H.I.S.) 2026 – IM­PACT, held at the Hy­att Re­gency, Dr Dowlath said he had al­ready seen the re­sults ahead of their of­fi­cial re­lease to­day.

He was at the time prais­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and Am­cham, par­tic­u­lar­ly sup­port for an ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence plat­form that pro­vid­ed pupils with ac­cess to past SEA Math­e­mat­ics ex­am­i­na­tion pa­pers.

“And this is where I want to thank Am­cham, through an NGO that they sup­port­ed, that as­sist­ed the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion in build­ing and suc­cess­ful­ly in­tro­duc­ing the SEA Math­e­mat­ics Past Pa­per AI plat­form.

You de­serve a won­der­ful round of ap­plause for that. Am­cham has played its role, and I got a sneak pre­view of the SEA re­sults, and there is sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment.

“You’ll hear more about it. So, thank you very much, Am­cham, for your role.”

Dr Dowlath al­so said the Gov­ern­ment was ex­pand­ing Wi-Fi band­width across all pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools as part of ef­forts to im­prove dig­i­tal ac­cess and ad­vance the wider trans­for­ma­tion of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

He said part­ner­ships among gov­ern­ment, in­dus­try, acad­e­mia and tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies would help pre­pare stu­dents not on­ly for to­day’s jobs but al­so for ca­reers that do not yet ex­ist.

The min­is­ter’s com­ments came ahead of the of­fi­cial re­lease of SEA re­sults, which will be avail­able on­line from 11 pm to­day.

PM promis­es lap­tops for all Form One stu­dents

In a mes­sage to stu­dents re­ceiv­ing their re­sults, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­grat­u­lat­ed all pupils who wrote the ex­am­i­na­tion and re­mind­ed them that their fu­ture would not be de­ter­mined by a sin­gle test.

“I urge every stu­dent to re­mem­ber that one ex­am­i­na­tion does not de­fine your fu­ture. Your char­ac­ter, de­ter­mi­na­tion, will­ing­ness to learn, and com­mit­ment to hard work will do far more to shape your suc­cess than any sin­gle ex­am­i­na­tion ever could.”

She al­so con­grat­u­lat­ed par­ents, guardians and teach­ers for sup­port­ing pupils through­out their prepa­ra­tion and en­cour­aged fam­i­lies to cel­e­brate every child’s achieve­ment, re­gard­less of the sec­ondary school they are as­signed.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so an­nounced that in­com­ing Form One stu­dents would re­ceive free lap­tops when the new school term be­gins in Sep­tem­ber, as part of the Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to mod­ernise ed­u­ca­tion and im­prove school safe­ty.

A to­tal of 17,509 pupils wrote this year’s SEA ex­am­i­na­tion on March 26, com­pared with 17,870 can­di­dates in 2025.

Last year, 11.65 per cent of can­di­dates (2,082 pupils) scored 30 per cent or be­low, while 66.18 per cent (11,827 pupils) achieved 50 per cent or above. A to­tal of 421 pupils, rep­re­sent­ing 2.36 per cent of can­di­dates, scored 90 per cent or high­er.

The na­tion­al mean scores in 2025 were 52.1 per cent in Math­e­mat­ics, 66.7 per cent in Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts, and 56.2 per cent in Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts Writ­ing. The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion al­so re­port­ed im­prove­ments in Math­e­mat­ics and Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts com­pared with the pre­vi­ous year, but a de­cline in Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts Writ­ing.

Speak­ing af­ter last year’s re­sults, the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter said more than 6,000 pupils—over one-third of those who wrote the ex­am­i­na­tion—scored be­low 50 per cent, de­scrib­ing this as ev­i­dence of a learn­ing gap re­quir­ing cur­ricu­lum ad­just­ments and fur­ther analy­sis by ed­u­ca­tion spe­cial­ists.