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Friday, May 9, 2025

Smooth SEA — Education stakeholders report exam was incident free

by

Carisa Lee
28 days ago
20250411

Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Apart from a bush­fire that caused a slight de­lay at an ex­am cen­tre in the Ca­roni Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict, yes­ter­day’s Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am was in­ci­dent-free.

This was con­firmed by Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly in a re­lease af­ter the ex­am.

“The suc­cess­ful over­sight of 547 ex­am­i­na­tion cen­tres for the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) would not have been pos­si­ble with­out the sup­port of the min­istry’s di­verse stake­hold­ers,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

She said the 17,937 pupils who sat the ex­am—9,095 boys and 8,842 girls—in­clud­ed 407 stu­dents in Trinidad and 29 in To­ba­go who were giv­en con­ces­sions.

Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin and Na­tion­al Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stew­art al­so re­port­ed the ex­am went smooth­ly.

“We had been told, how­ev­er, that there was a bush­fire in the Ca­roni Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict and the stu­dents who were close to the precincts of that bush­fire had to be re­lo­cat­ed but this was done calm­ly,” Stew­art said.

He said the af­fect­ed stu­dents were giv­en the time they lost to fin­ish the ex­am.

Be­fore the sched­uled end of the ex­am at 1 pm, anx­ious par­ents gath­ered out­side ex­am cen­tres.

At New­town Boys’ and Girls’ RC Schools on Mar­aval Road, Port-of-Spain, some par­ents wait­ed to greet their chil­dren with bal­loons and flow­ers.

Once the ex­ams were over, there were scenes of ju­bi­la­tion as proud par­ents greet­ed the re­lieved SEA can­di­dates.

Many of them left to take part in what has be­come a well-es­tab­lished tra­di­tion of cel­e­brat­ing the end of the ex­am at fast food out­lets, malls and en­ter­tain­ment cen­tres.

New­town Boys’ RC pupil Ka­dyn Cameron said the ex­am was eas­i­er than the prac­tice tests.

“The prac­tice pa­pers, the sec­tion three was just ridicu­lous, like even my fa­ther was hav­ing prob­lems solv­ing the ques­tions,” he said.

Cameron said he was re­lieved the ex­am was over.

New­town Girls’ pupil Kamyah Sylvester said she was stumped by one ques­tion in the math­e­mat­ics pa­per but oth­er parts of the ex­am were man­age­able.

She said she is look­ing for­ward to re­sum­ing sports and oth­er fun ac­tiv­i­ties in the com­ing months, as well as a lat­er bed­time.

“My new bed­time is like 12 ‘o’clock now,” she de­clared.

Scores of pupils con­verged on Movi­eTowne at In­vaders Bay to take ad­van­tage of post-SEA of­fers from var­i­ous busi­ness places.

The Nel­son Man­dela Park in St Clair was al­so a hive of post-SEA ac­tiv­i­ty, as Bmo­bile de­buted its “Blast OFF” event, an all-in­clu­sive cool down for stu­dents, teach­ers and par­ents. Stu­dents ac­com­pa­nied by a par­ent or guardian were grant­ed free ac­cess to the event up­on pre­sent­ing their SEA slip.

Bmo­bile ex­plained in a me­dia re­lease that “Blast OFF” was de­signed to cel­e­brate aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ments and the ded­i­ca­tion of fam­i­lies who sup­port­ed the stu­dents.

Par­ents and teach­ers at the event were pam­pered with mas­sages, fa­cials and even a bar­ber zone. For the stu­dents, there were ar­cade games, in­flat­able ob­sta­cle cours­es, car­ni­val games, laser tag, and oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties in ad­di­tion to free food, prizes and give­aways.

There was even a spe­cial per­for­mance by so­ca artiste Iw­er George to close the event.

TSTT CEO Kent West­ern promised there would be an­oth­er Blast Off in 2026.

“It was a re­al op­por­tu­ni­ty for Bmo­bile to get in­volved in a com­mu­ni­ty lev­el and start to cel­e­brate these kids ... and I’ve got a son who al­so did SEA to­day so it’s a bit of a cel­e­bra­tion my­self,” he said.

The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry said the ex­am re­sults will be avail­able for view­ing and down­load­ing from the SEA por­tal dur­ing the first week of Ju­ly.


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