Da­reece Po­lo

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

There was a marked im­prove­ment in grades among pupils across Trinidad and To­ba­go who wrote the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am this year.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MoE), 11,015 stu­dents passed the test out of the 18,797 who wrote math­e­mat­ics, cre­ative writ­ing and lan­guage arts. Close to 400 of those stu­dents scored above 90 per cent while 2,547 stu­dents ranked be­low 30 per cent.

Last year, 5,306 stu­dents scored less than 30 per cent among the 19,079 who wrote the ex­am. That same year, 7,071 pupils ob­tained SEA suc­cess, mark­ing a 37.06 per cent pass rate. In 2021, 10,259 of 19,544 stu­dents passed.

The mean Math­e­mat­ics score for 2023 stood at 50.4, cre­ative writ­ing at 53.4 and lan­guage arts at 61.6.

“These mean scores in 2023, when com­pared to 2022, show a marked im­prove­ment in the per­for­mance of stu­dents. In 2022, the mean Math­e­mat­ics score was 41.941. Sim­i­lar­ly, the mean Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts Writ­ing score was 44.339 and the mean Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts score was 44.397,” the MoE said.

Ac­cord­ing to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, “The im­prove­ment in stu­dent per­for­mance at SEA 2023 was ex­pect­ed, due to the phys­i­cal re­turn of stu­dents to the class­room, and the in­ter­ven­tions of the Min­istry in ad­dress­ing learn­ing loss through the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Re­me­di­al Ed­u­ca­tion Pro­gramme in 80 pri­ma­ry schools.

“This pro­gramme in­cludes ini­tia­tives such as the Af­ter School Sup­port Ed­u­ca­tion Pro­gramme (AS­SEP), as­sign­ment of ded­i­cat­ed School So­cial Work­ers, Guid­ance Of­fi­cers, Spe­cial Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cers, and Learn­ing Sup­port As­sis­tants. While the re­sults show that these ef­forts are be­gin­ning to bear fruit, these ini­tia­tives must be sus­tained con­sis­tent­ly over the next five years to ef­fec­tive­ly mit­i­gate the ef­fects of learn­ing loss.”

Prob­lems ac­cess­ing on­line re­sults

While many had some­thing to cel­e­brate, up to 5 pm some par­ents were un­able to ac­cess their chil­dren’s re­sults. This was lament­ed by the pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) Kevin David.

“It seems as though the site was over­whelmed by the many re­spons­es or rather re­quests that were be­ing made of it at this point in time. We have not been able to get an of­fi­cial re­port stat­ing the rea­sons why,” he said.

Fur­ther­more, the union said it re­mains dis­ap­point­ed that the top SEA stu­dent was not be­ing recog­nised.

“The or­gan­i­sa­tion sees no rea­son why. This is some­thing that we have all been ac­cus­tomed to in terms of pay­ing our re­spect to those who have done well in the ex­ams,” he said.

When asked for com­ment on re­ports of the re­sults por­tal crash­ing, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly shied away from the is­sue. In­stead, she spoke about the sav­ings the MoE in­curred by go­ing dig­i­tal.

“The cost sav­ing to the MOE and the tax­pay­er is sig­nif­i­cant, and the re­ceipt of re­sults in the pri­va­cy of the home is much ap­pre­ci­at­ed by par­ents and stu­dents alike,” she said.