The Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy (DERTech) is in the fi­nal stages of prepa­ra­tion for the 2025 Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA), which is set to take place on Thurs­day, April 10, 2025.

A to­tal of 1,004 stu­dents—in­clud­ing 549 boys and 455 girls, along with 34 pri­vate can­di­dates—are reg­is­tered to sit the ex­am across 40 des­ig­nat­ed cen­tres in To­ba­go.

To ac­com­mo­date stu­dents with spe­cial needs, the Di­vi­sion has ap­proved 25 ap­pli­ca­tions for spe­cial con­ces­sions. These pro­vi­sions en­sure that all stu­dents have the nec­es­sary sup­port to per­form at their best dur­ing the high-stakes ex­am­i­na­tion.

Train­ing for ex­am­i­na­tion per­son­nel is sched­uled for Thurs­day, April 3, 2025, at the Scar­bor­ough Li­brary. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, each ex­am­i­na­tion cen­tre will have a des­ig­nat­ed mon­i­tor, who must be present at the start of the ex­am to over­see pro­ceed­ings.

To cre­ate a con­ducive en­vi­ron­ment for stu­dents, schools are cur­rent­ly un­der­go­ing as­sess­ments to ad­dress any elec­tri­cal and plumb­ing is­sues ahead of the ex­am.

On the day of the ex­am, as­sess­ment su­per­vi­sors and testers will not be per­mit­ted to use mo­bile phones, ex­cept in emer­gen­cies. Ex­am­i­na­tion scripts will be dis­trib­uted and col­lect­ed by the Of­fice of the School Su­per­vi­sor II in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Trans­porta­tion Co­or­di­na­tor of the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy.

Sec­re­tary of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy, As­sem­bly­man Zor­isha Hack­ett, reaf­firmed the Di­vi­sion’s com­mit­ment to a smooth ex­am­i­na­tion process. “We un­der­stand the sig­nif­i­cance of the SEA ex­am in shap­ing the aca­d­e­m­ic fu­ture of our stu­dents. That’s why we are tak­ing every mea­sure to en­sure that each child has the best pos­si­ble en­vi­ron­ment to suc­ceed. From school in­fra­struc­ture as­sess­ments to spe­cial­ized sup­port for stu­dents with spe­cial needs, our goal is to fa­cil­i­tate a fair and seam­less ex­pe­ri­ence for all can­di­dates.”