ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­les@guardian.co.tt

A 500-page UN­ESCO 2026 re­port says Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) con­tin­ues to de­ter­mine chil­dren’s fu­tures too ear­ly, sort­ing them by class and leav­ing poor­er stu­dents to bear the great­est dis­ad­van­tage.

In the glob­al re­port, pages 152–154 ar­gue that while Trinidad and To­ba­go has ex­pand­ed ac­cess to sec­ondary school places, the SEA still de­ter­mines who gets the “bet­ter start” in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

The find­ings, launched in Paris last month, come as 17,509 pupils re­ceive their SEA re­sults to­day, mark­ing the end of one stage of pri­ma­ry ed­u­ca­tion and the be­gin­ning of a place­ment process that UN­ESCO says con­tin­ues to re­pro­duce in­equal­i­ty.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has said re­sults will be avail­able on­line from 11 pm on its SEA por­tal. Schools will not dis­trib­ute hard copies. A to­tal of 8,854 boys and 8,655 girls wrote the ex­am on March 26.

As pupils and par­ents as­sess school place­ments, UN­ESCO’s Glob­al Ed­u­ca­tion Mon­i­tor­ing Re­port 2026, ti­tled Ac­cess and eq­ui­ty: Count­down to 2030, warns that deep struc­tur­al in­equal­i­ties re­main em­bed­ded in the sys­tem.

The re­port notes that Trinidad and To­ba­go has sig­nif­i­cant­ly ex­pand­ed ac­cess to sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion since the 1990s, when par­tic­i­pa­tion rates lagged be­hind oth­er less wealthy Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean na­tions. In To­ba­go, tran­si­tion rates to sec­ondary school stood at just 40 per cent at the time.

The re­port ex­am­ined 35 coun­tries and high­lights that 23 new sec­ondary schools were built lo­cal­ly be­tween 2002 and 2007, main­ly in rur­al and un­der­served ar­eas. By 2019/2020, the coun­try had 90 gov­ern­ment sec­ondary schools, 44 gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed sec­ondary schools, and 55 pri­vate sec­ondary schools, with pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions en­rolling about 12 per cent of sec­ondary stu­dents.

How­ev­er, UN­ESCO warns that ex­pan­sion has not elim­i­nat­ed en­trenched dis­par­i­ties.

It states: “At the same time, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of dif­fer­ent school types has frag­ment­ed sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion by rep­u­ta­tion and per­for­mance with a neg­a­tive im­pact on eq­ui­ty.”

The re­port adds that small­er schools, of­ten in rur­al ar­eas, tend to have few­er full-time and cer­ti­fied teach­ers and a high­er con­cen­tra­tion of low­er-per­form­ing stu­dents.

It iden­ti­fies the main struc­tur­al di­vide as be­ing be­tween gov­ern­ment and gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed schools. As­sist­ed schools are typ­i­cal­ly run by pri­vate bod­ies, in­clud­ing re­li­gious boards. While they fol­low the na­tion­al cur­ricu­lum and re­ceive pub­lic fund­ing for teacher salaries, they re­tain ad­min­is­tra­tive au­ton­o­my.

Ac­cord­ing to UN­ESCO da­ta, 84 per cent of stu­dents com­plete Forms Four and Five, but ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30 per cent of stu­dents of rel­e­vant age are out of school.

The re­port’s most crit­i­cal find­ings re­late to SEA it­self. It ar­gues that de­spite at­tempts to move away from an elit­ist mod­el, the ex­am­i­na­tion “still de­ter­mines stu­dents’ ed­u­ca­tion­al path ear­ly on” and con­tin­ues to re­in­force the link be­tween so­cio-eco­nom­ic sta­tus and ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ty.

It states that the sys­tem is “per­pet­u­at­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion be­tween so­cioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus and ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties.”

Place­ment is de­ter­mined by SEA scores, stu­dents’ top four school choic­es, and school ca­pac­i­ty, with a com­put­er-based al­go­rithm as­sign­ing stu­dents un­til all avail­able spaces are filled.

How­ev­er, UN­ESCO notes that gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed sec­ondary schools are per­mit­ted to se­lect up to one-fifth of their in­take, rais­ing what it de­scribes as “favouritism con­cerns,” while the re­main­der of stu­dents are placed through the na­tion­al sys­tem.

The re­port al­so de­scribes SEA as a “bot­tle­neck” in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, not­ing that around five per cent of stu­dents are re­quired to re­take the ex­am­i­na­tion if they fall be­low a min­i­mum thresh­old, as they are deemed not to have mas­tered the re­quired foun­da­tion­al skills.

The re­port fur­ther states that parental and stu­dent pref­er­ences al­so re­in­force ed­u­ca­tion­al strat­i­fi­ca­tion, with school choic­es in­flu­enced by re­li­gion, ge­og­ra­phy, and rep­u­ta­tion. Tra­di­tion­al schools are of­ten favoured over new­er in­sti­tu­tions, even when ad­just­ed analy­ses sug­gest they do not sig­nif­i­cant­ly out­per­form oth­ers in val­ue-added learn­ing out­comes.

UN­ESCO notes that up­per sec­ondary com­ple­tion has re­mained large­ly stag­nant at around 85 per cent since 2010, with per­sis­tent dis­par­i­ties in­clud­ing a 12 per­cent­age-point gen­der gap and a 26 per­cent­age-point gap be­tween the rich­est and poor­est house­holds.

The SEA analy­sis draws on 2019/2020 en­rol­ment da­ta and stud­ies pub­lished be­tween 2010 and 2024.

It states: “So­cioe­co­nom­ic back­ground re­mains the ma­jor de­ter­mi­nant of ob­tain­ing the CSEC.”

The most se­vere dis­par­i­ty con­cerns boys from the poor­est house­holds, with UN­ESCO re­port­ing that on­ly 57 per cent com­plete up­per sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion.

At­tempts to reach Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath, Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer Dr Pe­ter Smith, and Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Crys­tal Bevin Ashe for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.

How­ev­er, Na­tion­al Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stew­art de­scribed the find­ings as “alarm­ing but be­liev­able,” say­ing they re­flect long-stand­ing con­cerns about fair­ness in the SEA place­ment sys­tem.