Some 19, 201 stu­dents wrote the SEA in 2020, of which 50.42% (9,681) were male and 49.58% (9,520) were fe­male. This is the high­est num­ber of stu­dents writ­ing over the last 11 years.

The stu­dents faced a myr­i­ad of chal­lenges, not least of which was un­cer­tain­ty about the ex­am­i­na­tion which was even­tu­al­ly held on Au­gust 20.

In an un­usu­al move, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion yes­ter­day shared some de­tails on place­ment cri­te­ria and high­lights of stu­dent per­for­mance and stu­dent recog­ni­tion in this year’s ex­am­i­na­tion.

Place­ment Cri­te­ria

Stu­dents were as­signed to sec­ondary schools based on the es­tab­lished place­ment pol­i­cy, which com­prised six cri­te­ria:

(i) Or­der of Mer­it

(ii) Choice of school

(iii) Gen­der

(iv) Prin­ci­pals’ 20% se­lec­tion

(v) Res­i­dence

(vi) Mul­ti­ple Birth

Twin sisters Kinden and Jendayi Jobe, from the Gloster Lodge Moravian Primary School, display their SEA certificates after passing for Tranquility Secondary School.

KERWIN PIERRE

Stu­dents who were un­suc­cess­ful in ob­tain­ing a score suf­fi­cient for place­ment in­to one of the four schools of their choos­ing, were as­signed based on their place of res­i­dence and avail­abil­i­ty of spaces in the schools with­in their com­mu­ni­ty of res­i­dence. If spaces were un­avail­able in the near­est school to the res­i­dence of stu­dents, then they were placed in the next near­est school with avail­able spaces.

In keep­ing with the Con­cor­dat and the prac­tice of pre­vi­ous years, prin­ci­pals of gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed sec­ondary schools were per­mit­ted to se­lect 20 per cent of their stu­dent in­take.

Stu­dents who were born af­ter Au­gust 31st, 2007 (less than 13 years) and whose av­er­age score was 30 per cent or less but who had not pre­vi­ous­ly sat the SEA will be re­quired to re­peat the year and re-sit the SEA in 2021.

Stu­dents who at­tained a com­pos­ite weight­ed stan­dard score of 30 per cent or be­low and who were born be­fore Au­gust 31st, 2007, or who were do­ing the as­sess­ment for a sec­ond time were placed in a sec­ondary school based on choice of school or res­i­dence.

Com­po­nents of the ex­ams

In 2020, the SEA com­prised three sub­jects, name­ly, Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts Writ­ing, Math­e­mat­ics and Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts. Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts Writ­ing and Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts, which are in the same cog­nate area, are com­bined and to­geth­er con­tribute the same per­cent­age to the fi­nal score as Math­e­mat­ics. This is the sec­ond year of SEA with the new test for­mat, which was de­signed to as­sess high­er-or­der skills in Math­e­mat­ics (rea­son­ing and analysing) and Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts (for ex­am­ple, in­fer­ring, eval­u­a­tion and ap­pre­ci­a­tion).

Megan De Freitas hugs her mother Janelle Peruzar after receiving her SEA results at the Febeau Government Primary School in San Juan yesterday.

ANISTO ALVES

Over­all Per­for­mance

In 2020, the mean Math­e­mat­ics score is 52.9. Sim­i­lar­ly, the mean Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts Writ­ing score is 57 and the mean Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts score is 60.7.

Per­for­mance by Bands

In 2020, the per­for­mance in SEA was al­so analysed ac­cord­ing to the per­cent­age of stu­dents at­tain­ing three im­por­tant thresh­olds.

The per­cent­age of stu­dents scor­ing above 50 per cent was 63 per cent and the per­cent­age of stu­dents scor­ing 30 per cent or be­low was 11 per cent. The per­cent­age of stu­dents scor­ing above 90 per cent was 1.61 per cent. These per­cent­ages are re­flec­tive of a nor­mal dis­tri­b­u­tion of scores for norm-ref­er­enced as­sess­ments that are suit­ed for ac­com­mo­dat­ing the place­ment of stu­dents. In 2019, 52% of stu­dents scored above 50%, 0.69% scored above 90% and 13.7% scored 30% or be­low.

Most Out­stand­ing Re­sults

In 2020, fe­male stu­dents at­tained the dis­tinc­tion of the top three stu­dents. The top male stu­dent placed sev­enth.