Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

The 43 Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) pri­ma­ry schools have seen an in­crease in the num­ber of stu­dents who passed for sev­en-year schools af­ter set­ting the 2024 Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am.

So said Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the SDMS, Vi­jay Ma­haraj, dur­ing an award cer­e­mo­ny for the top three per­form­ers of each school and over­all per­form­ers at Mar­quis Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, Char­lieville, on Sun­day.

“In 2023, we had 98 per cent of five and sev­en-year pass­es, out of the five years, there was 27 per cent, and in the sev­en years there was 73 per cent. In 2024 there was a 97 per cent, five years was 23 per cent, this is where the clap­ping is; sev­en years 77 per cent,” he said.

Ma­haraj told the stu­dents that that was what suc­cess looked like and at­trib­uted it to their ef­forts as well as the hard work of their par­ents and teach­ers. “No oth­er de­nom­i­na­tion­al board or any board in Trinidad and To­ba­go could touch that, and you were re­spon­si­ble for it,” he told the au­di­ence.

Avani Mo­han of Mon­roe Road Hin­du School scored the high­est in the lan­guage out of all stu­dents in the 43 SDMS schools with 96.88 per cent, mean­while, 11 stu­dents tied for to­tal marks in Math­e­mat­ics.

“You have suc­ceed­ed, and some of you are in the top ten in this coun­try out of 18,000-plus chil­dren,” he said.

Two stu­dents of the Fe­lic­i­ty SDMS Hin­du Pri­ma­ry School and Pe­nal Rock (Kubairs­ingh) Hin­du Pri­ma­ry School had the high­est over­all com­pos­ite score of 258.9 out of 260.

How­ev­er, Ma­haraj was dis­ap­point­ed that the SDMS had to host such a func­tion in­de­pen­dent­ly and scold­ed the Gov­ern­ment for not re­ward­ing the top-per­form­ing SEA stu­dents.

“The Gov­ern­ment of T&T doesn’t un­der­stand what is tak­ing place in ed­u­ca­tion; I make no bones about it. I am very frank; they do not un­der­stand ed­u­ca­tion, and our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, or how to treat our stu­dents,” he ex­plained.

Ma­haraj said he was dis­ap­point­ed that these stu­dents were not ac­knowl­edged for the sev­en years of their lives they spent work­ing to­wards a suc­cess­ful SEA re­sult and be­fore they spent the next sev­en years in sec­ondary school. He told the stu­dents that in every sphere of life, peo­ple need the im­pe­tus to be recog­nised be­cause they have done a good job.