Near­ly 18,000 stu­dents across Trinidad and To­ba­go sat the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) on Thurs­day with­out any re­port­ed in­ci­dents, ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

The high-stakes ex­am­i­na­tion, which de­ter­mines place­ment in pub­lic sec­ondary schools, was ad­min­is­tered at 547 cen­tres na­tion­wide. This year, 17,937 stu­dents reg­is­tered to take the test—9,095 boys and 8,842 girls. Of those, 16,931 were in Trinidad and 1,006 in To­ba­go.

For stu­dents who were un­able to write the ex­am due to ill­ness or oth­er emer­gen­cies, a sup­ple­men­tal sit­ting is sched­uled for May 8.

The Min­istry con­tin­ued its sup­port for stu­dents with spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion needs, pro­vid­ing ac­com­mo­da­tions such as ex­tra time, sign lan­guage in­ter­pre­ta­tion, Braille or large print scripts, and read­er or writer as­sis­tance. In to­tal, 407 stu­dents in Trinidad and 29 in To­ba­go re­ceived these con­ces­sions.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said the smooth ex­e­cu­tion of the ex­am re­flect­ed the co­or­di­nat­ed ef­fort of ed­u­ca­tors, sup­port staff, and ex­ter­nal agen­cies.

“The suc­cess­ful over­sight of 547 ex­am­i­na­tion cen­tres... would not have been pos­si­ble with­out the sup­port of the Min­istry’s di­verse stake­hold­ers,” she said in a state­ment, adding thanks to teach­ers, prin­ci­pals, jan­i­to­r­i­al and se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel, as well as ex­ter­nal part­ners such as the Po­lice Ser­vice, NMTS, T&TEC, and WASA.

SEA re­sults are ex­pect­ed to be avail­able in the first week of Ju­ly via the on­line SEA Por­tal. The Min­istry plans to con­firm the ex­act re­lease date in the com­ing weeks.