SEA stagnation

ALMOST five years after an unprecedented pandemic rocked education, the effects are still reverberating – most worryingly, it seems, among primary schools.

This week’s Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) examination results confirm that while in-person classes resumed in 2022, and while the Government allocates the lion’s share of the budget to education consistently, our students have not fully rebounded.

In fact, analysis suggests the opposite.

Contrary to the Ministry of Education’s assertion that the figures show “a generally encouraging trend” and that “the similarity of the students’ performance in 2023 and 2024 indicate steady and stable recovery,” the results are disheartening.

Key metrics are worse off.

The percentage of students scoring 50 per cent and above was 57.91 per cent, versus 58.06 per cent in 2023.

A greater percentage of students scored less than 30 per cent, namely 14.39 per cent versus 13.55 per cent.

Even the proportion of students excelling by scoring above 90 per cent has fallen from 2.11 per cent to 1.42 per cent.

Figures cannot tell the whole story.

But the worry that a generation of students has been lost to covid19 is, we fear, borne out somewhat by these kinds of statistics.

Bolder approaches are needed.

For the moment, where officials see stability, we see relative stagnation at the very least.

The statistics from 2022 going into 2023 had, in sharp contrast to this year’s results, shown dramatic improvements.

Failure to maintain momentum is a sign the system may not have been able to compensate in any significant way.

To wit: though the mean raw mathematics score and the mean raw English language arts writing scores jumped by 0.3 points and 5.6 points respectively, English language arts fell by 8.2, outpacing both jumps combined.

Nonetheless, we congratulate all students on surviving this vexing exam and encourage participation in the Remedial Education Programme where applicable.

But we warn this programme is not a panacea for the ills of the system.

According to the ministry, there has been an increase in the average weighted score of students in remedial classes in 50 per cent of 80 schools of focus.

However, this is a count within a specific group generated using a weighted average and furnished without other information, such as the percentage of those who passed.

What took place in the other 50 per cent of these schools?

“It is not sufficient to say we are not getting worse,” Tabaquite MP Anita Haynes-Alleyne correctly noted this week, pointing, as well, to the slow filling of vacancies, pay issues and reported cuts.

At the onset of the pandemic years ago, 65,000 students did not have laptops.

Later, the challenge was adjusting to virtual learning.

The results of all such stresses and more are writ large today and may well reverberate in years to come.