Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Sig­nal Hill Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School is buzzing with ex­cite­ment, af­ter it pro­duced the top Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) stu­dent on the is­land.

The Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion made the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day, but stopped short of iden­ti­fy­ing the stand­out stu­dent. In­stead, it list­ed the top ten girls and boys in al­pha­bet­i­cal or­der in a post to so­cial me­dia.

The di­vi­sion has cit­ed con­cerns about fi­nal rank­ings be­ing ad­just­ed ow­ing to of­fi­cial query­ing of marks, as hap­pened last year.

How­ev­er, se­nior sources at the school con­firmed that na­tion­al ten­nis play­er Tei­jha Welling­ton, 11, re­ceived the high­est marks on the is­land.

The school has two oth­er ex­cep­tion­al per­form­ers, with D’Mi­ca Du­mas and Zer­ri­ah Boyce al­so among the top ten girls. All three passed for Bish­op’s High School.

Tei­jha’s cel­e­bra­tions were put on hold yes­ter­day, as she joined her school­mates at Shaw Park Recre­ation Ground to com­pete in the To­ba­go leg of the Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry Schools’ Crick­et Fes­ti­val.

She al­so com­petes in foot­ball and net­ball. Sports Min­is­ter Phillip Watts con­grat­u­lat­ed her on her feat as the match­es bowled off.

She told Guardian Me­dia there was ju­bi­la­tion in her house­hold on Thurs­day night when she logged on to the min­istry web­site and found out she had passed for her first choice. How­ev­er, she said her pre­mier rank­ing was no sur­prise to her, as she worked tremen­dous­ly hard to at­tain her goals.

“I know that I put in the work. I stayed up late re­vis­ing, wak­ing up ear­ly, go­ing class­es—every­thing that I had to do. It came true and I suc­ceed­ed with my goal,” she said.

Mean­while, D’Mi­ca said al­though she had pre­pared well, it was a ner­vous wait to see where her aca­d­e­m­ic jour­ney would con­tin­ue.

D’Mi­ca thanked her par­ents, Damien and Car­rie Du­mas, for keep­ing her fo­cused and was full of praise for her Stan­dard Five teacher Wendy Gopaul.

A beam­ing Gopaul cred­it­ed the en­tire staff for the school’s achieve­ments, adding that par­ent in­volve­ment was al­so crit­i­cal.

“I am thank­ful to God that all the chil­dren’s hard work paid off. Their ef­forts have reaped the re­wards they worked for,” she said.

The Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion al­so named the top over­all schools, with Buc­coo Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry (213.91 points) tak­ing the top spot ahead of Cas­tara Gov­ern­ment (210.84) and Spey­side An­gli­can (210.41), re­spec­tive­ly. Sig­nal Hill (209.52) was fourth while Scar­bor­ough Methodist (206.99) placed fifth.

Cas­tara Stan­dard Five teacher Stacey Brem­nor was over­whelmed with emo­tion as she re­flect­ed on the rur­al school’s per­for­mance.

Asked what the se­cret to the school’s suc­cess was, she said, “Hard work, ded­i­ca­tion, team­work, try­ing to mo­ti­vate the chil­dren as much as pos­si­ble and try­ing to get them to un­der­stand they can do it just like every­one else.”

Ed­u­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Or­lan­do Kerr, whose son Tahir placed in the top ten among boys, said he was pleased with the over­all per­for­mance. How­ev­er, he said there is still room for im­prove­ment.

Kerr said 14 schools per­formed above the na­tion­al mean this year com­pared to 12 in 2025. He not­ed girls still are out­per­form­ing boys, but not­ed this was a trend ob­served na­tion­al­ly.

He said the per­for­mance of a few schools fell off, but said the di­vi­sion is im­ple­ment­ing poli­cies geared to­wards im­prov­ing per­for­mance from school en­try up­wards.

To­ba­go top 10 fe­male

Adri­anne John - Scar­bor­ough Methodist

Ce­line Ed­wards - Belle Gar­den AC

D’Mi­ca Du­mas - Sig­nal Hill Govt

Kaiya Pri­ma - Scar­bor­ough RC

Ka­ri­na Job - Scar­bor­ough Methodist

Khloe Tre­strail - Black Rock Govt

Na’imah Bur­ris -Scar­bor­ough Methodist

Tei­jha Welling­ton - Sig­nal Hill Govt

Zer­ri­ah Boyce - Sig­nal Hill Govt

Z’Nae Ce­les­tine - Belle Gar­den AC

To­ba­go top 10 male

Ay­den Thomas - St An­drews AC

Che Hurst - Whim AC

Gevaugh­n­son Ot­t­ley - Buc­coo Govt

Je­re­mi­ah Mapp - To­ba­go Pri­vate Can­di­dates

Je­vante Louis - Scar­bor­ough Methodist

Keoni Potts - Hope AC

LJ Melville - Scar­bor­ough Methodist

Nicholas McLetchie - Lam­beau AC

Sven Thomas - Buc­coo Govt

Tahir Kerr - Pem­broke AC