The wait is over for over 17,000 primary school students who sat this year’s Secondary Entrance Assessment Exams.
The results were released on Thursday night via the Ministry of Education’s online portal, and on Friday the top five performers were revealed and received their awards of recognition.
The students are Sandhya Maharaj of Macaulay Government Primary, private candidate Xavier Telesford, Nicholas Dolly of Chaguanas Government Primary, Kailash Dialsingh of Exchange Presbyterian, and Ashlyn Ramkissoon of Jordan Hill Presbyterian.
Minister of Education Dr. Michael Dowlath commended this year’s group of SEA students, but said more needs to be done to fill learning gaps still present.
“66.18% of the students scored 50% and above. That means over six thousand students, more than one third of all students, scored below 50%. So this indicates there’s a learning gap that all our specialist educators and the school supervisors, the principals, the teachers, will start to analyse now the results so that we could now, for the new academic year, ensure that we tweak our curriculum to meet the needs and to close those learning gaps.”
Dr. Dowlath said the assessments should be used to restructure methods of remediation.
“Two thousand and eighty-two students scored 30% or below. That’s of concern to us too, and so as we go forward and we analyse this data, we want to ensure that at the Ministry of Education we look at those students, their performances and ensure that in the upcoming year, we restructure the way in which we do the remediation work. Especially in numeracy and literacy.”
He also highlighted an improvement in Mathematics and English. Dr. Dowlath, however, urged for collaboration between teachers, school supervisors, and principals to ensure the future success of students.
“There were some improvements in Mathematics and English Language Arts but in the ELA or what you all call the creative writing students, there was a slight decrease and so we’ve picked up some of the trends. We will be sharing the statistics through the school supervisors with our principals and teachers and parents so you too will be able to understand where the gaps are, and as we go through the next academic year, how we fill those gaps.”
The top 200 performers are to be announced later.