Remedial scores continue to be a challenge faced in Tobago.
During a press conference on Monday, education officials said this affected Tobago’s performance in the 2025 Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) exams.
It was noted that 999 students sat the 2025 SEA, with thirty-eight required to re-sit the examination.
THA Secretary of Education Zorisha Hackett explained that Tobago was seven points below the national average score in the 2025 SEA.
“The national average total weighted score is 200 and Tobago’s average is 193.66, or approximately seven points below the national average. The girls’ average was 197.29, or just about three points below the national average, whereas the boys’ overall average was 190.66 this year, and so what this means is that overall our girls were about three points away from our national average, but our boys were ten points adrift of this national mean.”
Secretary Hackett explained that remedial scores impacted Tobago’s overall performance, with a higher number of male remedial students. However, boys outperformed girls at five schools.
“These remedial students, however, had an average total score of 152.84 in 2025, and this finding will fuel our contribution to the Tobago District Assessment, and what we want to do is identify, as we have been doing, our at-risk students before the examination and remedial efforts that we need to employ.”
Researcher attached to the Division of Education, Bobby Andrews, provided a comprehensive analysis as he outlined the remedial scores in this year’s examination.
“The remedial scores are 47 points below the national mean, which means for the students who score under 30%, what we are looking at is for them to be scoring 47 points more for Mathematics, 47 points more for English, and at least eight points more for Creative Writing if they were to be performing at that level.”
Mr. Andrews noted that twelve schools performed above the national mean.
“We are seeing a bit of polarisation where in as much as we have twelve schools doing exceedingly well, we have twelve schools at the bottom. Those are the mixed reactions that we would see that the data presents.”
Mr. Andrews said with relevant intervention, Tobago can see improvement.