KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Not every child per­forms at their best on the same day, and for ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers, that re­al­i­ty is at the cen­tre of re­newed dis­cus­sion about whether the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) should con­tin­ue to re­ly on a sin­gle high-stakes ex­am­i­na­tion.

The con­ver­sa­tion has resur­faced along­side this year’s SEA re­sults, as ed­u­ca­tion lead­ers again point to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of in­tro­duc­ing a Con­tin­u­ous As­sess­ment Com­po­nent (CAC) which would spread eval­u­a­tion across pri­ma­ry school years rather than de­pend­ing en­tire­ly on one test.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath said on Wednes­day that this year’s re­sults show “sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment,” speak­ing ahead of their of­fi­cial re­lease at the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce Tech Hub Is­lands Sum­mit, where he al­so high­light­ed the use of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence tools to sup­port Math­e­mat­ics prepa­ra­tion.

He point­ed to wider dig­i­tal ex­pan­sion in schools, in­clud­ing im­proved Wi-Fi ac­cess, as part of on­go­ing ef­forts to mod­ernise the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and strength­en learn­ing out­comes.

But for ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers, the dis­cus­sion is less about sys­tems and more about the lived ex­pe­ri­ence of chil­dren un­der pres­sure.

Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tions Wal­ter Stew­art said SEA “in its present form de­ter­mines sec­ondary place­ment, and as such it de­serves ef­fort and prepa­ra­tion,” but stressed that it does not de­fine long-term suc­cess.

“The SEA does not de­ter­mine the fu­ture suc­cess of a stu­dent be­cause no mat­ter what school you have been as­signed to, every school is guid­ed by the dic­tates of a na­tion­al cur­ricu­lum,” Stew­art said.

Stew­art point­ed to the re­al­i­ties be­hind ex­am­i­na­tion per­for­mance, not­ing that some stu­dents do not per­form to ex­pec­ta­tion on the day due to anx­i­ety, emo­tion­al pres­sure and the weight of ex­pec­ta­tions placed on them by fam­i­lies and the wider sys­tem.

It is with­in that con­text, he sug­gest­ed, that dis­cus­sions about a CAC con­tin­ue to sur­face as a way of cap­tur­ing stu­dent abil­i­ty over time rather than re­ly­ing sole­ly on a sin­gle ex­am­i­na­tion sit­ting.

SEA, he said, re­mains a mile­stone in the ed­u­ca­tion jour­ney, but al­so a mo­ment where per­for­mance can be shaped by cir­cum­stance as much as prepa­ra­tion.

The 2026 SEA re­sults were re­leased for 17,509 stu­dents, mark­ing a key tran­si­tion point for pupils en­ter­ing sec­ondary school, where place­ment will de­ter­mine their learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment for the next five years.

Ahead of last night’s re­lease, the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) called for calm as fam­i­lies re­ceived re­sults and urged par­ents not to place un­due pres­sure on chil­dren based on school as­sign­ment.

“The school to which they are as­signed does not de­ter­mine their des­tiny,” TTUTA Pres­i­dent Crys­tal Ashe said, adding that suc­cess de­pends on “dis­ci­pline, per­se­ver­ance, re­silience and a com­mit­ment to con­tin­u­ous learn­ing.”

Ashe al­so de­scribed SEA as a be­gin­ning rather than an end­point, stat­ing: “SEA is not the des­ti­na­tion, it is sim­ply the be­gin­ning of an ex­cit­ing new chap­ter.”