AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

CSEC and CAPE 2025 re­sults are in! And while the over­all per­for­mance has im­proved, TTUTA pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin ad­mits that Math­e­mat­ics re­mains the biggest hur­dle.

In a press re­lease is­sued last week Fri­day, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion re­vealed that the over­all pass rate for stu­dents achiev­ing Grades I to III in the Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) ex­ams was 70.65 per cent, up from 68 per cent in 2024.

Eng­lish A al­so im­proved, reach­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 81 per cent, while Math­e­mat­ics on­ly rose to 45.89 per cent, com­pared with 42.59 per cent last year.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent said that sig­nif­i­cant work is need­ed in Math­e­mat­ics. He ex­pressed con­cern that more than half of the stu­dents who sat the CSEC Math­e­mat­ics failed the sub­ject.

“It’s one of the sub­ject ar­eas that needs to be fo­cused on, and in our hands-on and prac­ti­cal way as well, too. Some­times we just look at it as the­o­ret­i­cal,” Lum Kin said.

He added that the foun­da­tion for Math­e­mat­ics must be laid from as ear­ly as ear­ly child­hood ed­u­ca­tion and may re­quire ad­just­ments.

“We have to make Maths more en­joy­able as well, too, as far as pos­si­ble. I’m not say­ing that our teach­ers are not do­ing that. But the use of tech­nol­o­gy and oth­er ar­eas, I think, and we think can en­hance the per­for­mance in Math­e­mat­ics.”

The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry re­port­ed im­prove­ments in 23 CSEC sub­jects, in­clud­ing Bi­ol­o­gy, Chem­istry, Ge­og­ra­phy, Prin­ci­ples of Ac­counts (POA), and Span­ish.

For the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tion (CAPE), an over­all pass rate of 95.72 per cent was achieved.

CAPE Unit I record­ed 100 per cent pass­es in Agri­cul­tur­al Sci­ence, Food and Nu­tri­tion, Ge­og­ra­phy, and Per­form­ing Arts, while Unit II al­so saw 100 per cent pass­es in sub­jects such as Elec­tri­cal and Elec­tron­ic En­gi­neer­ing Tech­nol­o­gy, Art & De­sign, and Per­form­ing Arts.

Lum Kin em­pha­sised the need to fill long-term va­can­cies in the Tech­ni­cal and Vo­ca­tion­al Ed­u­ca­tion and Train­ing (TVET) pro­gramme to strength­en these spe­cialised ar­eas, which many stu­dents re­ly on to es­tab­lish their ca­reers.

“We are quite in­ter­est­ed to see the pol­i­cy of this present Gov­ern­ment and the MoE as it re­lates to TVET. They would have put out short-term con­tracts for the em­ploy­ment of as­sis­tant teach­ers or in­struc­tors, but we are look­ing for the long term and the fill­ing of the va­can­cies that are there so that we can have an en­hanced area in these ar­eas,” he said.

Lum Kin en­cour­aged stu­dents who may not have been suc­cess­ful in their ex­am­i­na­tions not to give up, re­mind­ing them that they can re­sit in Jan­u­ary and ex­plore oth­er path­ways to get the best start to their ca­reers.