For yet another year, the extreme stresses associated with the highly competitive Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) were widely criticised in the build-up to the exam on Thursday.
No other exam attracts as much interest and debate as SEA, the admissions process for public secondary schools in this country and across the region. However, the pressure is most intense for the candidates, their parents and teachers, and the vast ecosystem of professionals and facilitators involved in administering the annual exam.
That is why it is so important now, as the anxious wait begins for the release of the results in early July, to acknowledge and congratulate everyone involved in a process that took place without leaks and was otherwise incident-free.
In the first week of July, most of the focus will be on the SEA candidates who secure places in their first-choice secondary schools.
So this is the best time, before attention is drawn elsewhere, to commend the efforts of all those students who have just passed one of the most gruelling academic hurdles of their young lives.
Discussion of the outcomes, which will determine the educational institutions where they will spend the next five to seven years of their lives, can be left for another time.
For now, let the focus be on providing some very necessary breathing space, as well as support, to all those boys and girls, just 11 to 13, who have just come through two intense years of SEA preparation.
It was a flurry of past papers, practice tests and—for those with the financial means—after-school private lessons, in the race to gain entrance to one of T&T’s “prestige” schools.
No matter how often the blatant social inequalities in the system are deplored, the challenge of getting into a school perceived to have the tools needed for students to build a successful future, compared to the other educational institutions with relatively fewer resources, remains.
Only the students who score in the 91-95 percentile bracket will have a chance of getting into the top schools. The placement of others, with scores between 83 and 60, depends on available school places and then there is the uncertainty of even a fighting chance for those with below-par grades.
Calls for abolition of this “prestige school” system have intensified over the years, but even with all the calls for the Ministry of Education to do away with the exam, very little has been done to create the equitable education institutions that will make that possible.
At present, that goal remains distant, even far-fetched, as the next cohort of SEA candidates, the ones soon to be promoted from Standard Four, are already deep into preparations for next year’s exams and things don’t look too promising for those pupils in lower primary school classes.
Still, for the current crop of candidates settling down for the months-long wait for their results, SEA marks a critical phase in their education journey.
Much of their formative learning experiences took place during COVID-19, with all the disruptions, the difficult adjustments to online classes and the inevitable learning loss that remains a formidable challenge for educators.
For now, however, there is a pause, a respite before entering secondary school.
The short Easter break is the least that these youngsters, their teachers and their parents deserve.
