To­mor­row, 17,327 pupils will know their aca­d­e­m­ic fates when this year's re­sults of the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) are re­leased. The ex­am­i­na­tion was the last to be held in March as plans are un­der­way by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MOE) and its min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh to have it moved to May, be­gin­ning next year. The shift is to al­low pupils more time to pre­pare for the ex­am since there had been very lit­tle im­prove­ment in pupils' per­for­mances over the last three years. The SEA is a place­ment ex­am­i­na­tion which de­ter­mines a pupil's en­try in­to a sec­ondary school. They are test­ed in math­e­mat­ics, lan­guage arts and cre­ative writ­ing. Pri­or to the SEA was the Com­mon En­trance Ex­am­i­na­tion (CEE) and the Eleven-plus Ex­am which al­so done were around March/April.

CEE was abol­ished by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar who was once an Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter. Ten years ago on March 29, 2001, close to 22,220 pupils wrote the in­au­gur­al SEA ex­am. The in­tro­duc­tion of the SEA fol­lowed the achieve­ment of uni­ver­sal sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion in T&T in 2000. This year, 8,540 girls and 8,787 boys wrote the ex­am. They will be as­signed to a sec­ondary school based on or­der of mer­it, pupils' choice of school, gen­der and res­i­dence. In his pre­sen­ta­tion of da­ta for last year's re­sults, Gopeesingh said 11.7 per cent of the 17,270 pupils scored less than 30 per cent which was ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,000 pupils. He said To­ba­go had the high­est fail­ure rate, 42 per cent. Some 793 To­ba­go pupils wrote the ex­am this year.

Of the low achiev­ers' fig­ure (2,000) the ma­jor­i­ty was boys who ac­count­ed for 68 per cent. Girls out­per­formed boys last year when 62 per cent scored more than 90 per cent in the ex­am. Gopeesingh al­so called on de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools to ex­am­ine their per­for­mance rate. He said 45.6 per cent of pupils at­tend­ing de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools scored less than 30 per cent with the high­est be­ing from An­gli­can schools which ac­count­ed for 15.1 per cent. A SEA per­for­mance re­port, con­duct­ed by the MOE for 2001-2004, stat­ed in the ed­u­ca­tion­al dis­tricts of St George and Vic­to­ria pupils per­formed above the na­tion­al mean. The dis­trict of North East­ern per­formed sig­nif­i­cant­ly be­low the na­tion­al mean and was fol­lowed close­ly by To­ba­go and South East­ern. The re­port al­so re­vealed girls at­tained high­er scores than boys in all three sub­jects. It said the per­for­mance of Vic­to­ria was bet­ter than Port-of-Spain's. The per­for­mance of rur­al schools in sev­en of the eight dis­tricts fell be­low the na­tion­al mean in all sub­jects.

Past top pupils:

• 2010: Ashaish Mo­hammed (San Fer­nan­do TML).

• 2009: Jamelia Forde (San Fer­nan­do Girls' Gov­ern­ment) and Danielle Se­u­nar­ine (Dyanand Memo­r­i­al Vedic).

• 2008: Ajay Ramesh­wars­ingh (Gand­hi Memo­r­i­al Vedic).

• 2007: Sush­ma Karim (San Fer­nan­do TML).