Gadsby-Dolly disappointed SEA awards returns

Former Education Minister Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly is disappointed to see the return of the recognition of top Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) performers.

"I see the awards are back but I also see the divisiveness are back again and that is exactly what the PNM took the decision to not do that to avoid. However, let's see how it goes," Dr Gadsby-Dolly told Newsday after a PNM political meeting at its Central Regional Office on July 5.

Top performers Nicholas Dolly of Chaguanas Government Primary School, homeschooled Xavier Telesford, Sandhya Boodram Mahara of Macaulay Government Primary, Kailash Dialsingh of Exchange Presbyterian, and Ashlyn Ramkissoon of Jordan Hill Presbyterian received awards at the Ministry of Education's Port-of-Spain head office on July 4 from Minister Dr Michael Dowlath.

Dowlath said the list of 200 top performers would be published at a later date.

In 2020, the Ministry of Education, under Gadsby-Dolly's the leadership, stopped releasing the names of the exam's top performers following a mix up with the award of the President's Medal. Since then, SEA rankings were only available by freedom of information requests.

Despite her disappointment, Gadsby-Dolly said she was grateful that the exam was successfully administered.

"I'm very happy as always for the fact that there could be a successful SEA executed in TT. I'm especially happy, of course, that the legacy of the SEA results portal continues and it's a wonderful thing to look back and see your contribution on the landscape and I think that's the important thing because nobody's going to be one place forever."

This year 17,870 students sat the exam with 11.65 per cent scoring 30 per cent or below, 66.18 per cent scoring 50 per cent or above, and 2.36 per cent scoring 90 per cent or above.

According to Dr Dowlath, there were improvements in Mathematics and English Language Arts, but a decrease in English Language writing performance. The national mean scores were 52.1 per cent for Mathematics, 66.7 per cent for English Language Arts was 56.2 per cent for English Language Writing.