The Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Tabaquite, Ani­ta Haynes Al­leyne says there is no re­al sta­tis­ti­cal im­prove­ment in stu­dents’ per­for­mance in this year’s Sec­ondary En­trance Ex­am­i­na­tion (SEA).

In a me­dia re­lease to­day MP Haynes-Al­leyne joins the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in con­grat­u­lat­ing all stu­dents who re­ceived their Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) re­sults to­day.

MP Haynes Al­leyne said, “I wish to con­grat­u­late each one of you on this mile­stone achieve­ment. I know that the lessons of per­se­ver­ance, hard work and dis­ci­pline will con­tin­ue to serve you through­out and be­yond your aca­d­e­m­ic ca­reer. I al­so com­mend the sup­port sys­tem of par­ents, teach­ers and well-wish­ers. Con­tin­ue to pour in­to these young stu­dents so that they may achieve their fullest po­ten­tial.”

Re­flect­ing on the SEA 2024 re­sults, the Shad­ow Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion not­ed, “As pol­i­cy­mak­ers, ex­am­i­na­tion re­sult re­leas­es should trig­ger for us a spe­cif­ic type of analy­sis. As it re­lates to SEA, we must de­ter­mine – as ev­i­denced by the da­ta – whether or not the in­puts in­to our pri­ma­ry school ed­u­ca­tion are gen­er­at­ing so­lu­tions to the iden­ti­fied is­sues and whether there are new chal­lenges that ought to be con­sid­ered.”

The Tabaquite MP main­tained that the da­ta does not in­di­cate any re­al sta­tis­ti­cal im­prove­ment in per­for­mance de­spite the find­ings of the Va­ca­tion Re­vi­sion Pro­gramme (VRP) which was in­tro­duced last year.

She said, “It is not enough to say that stu­dent per­for­mance in 2024 builds on im­prove­ments seen in 2023 when the con­text of last year’s per­for­mance im­prove­ment was di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to the COVID-19-im­pact­ed re­sults of 2022.”

“In fact, less stu­dents record­ed scores over 90% this year when com­pared to last year. More­over, we are still look­ing at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40% of stu­dents scor­ing un­der 50%. There has al­so been a small in­crease this year in the num­ber of stu­dents scor­ing un­der 30%, from 13.55% in 2023 to 14.39% in 2024. These num­bers tell us that a large group of stu­dents have not dis­played the com­pe­tence to prop­er­ly par­tic­i­pate in sec­ondary school,” she said.

Haynes-Al­leyne al­so rec­om­mend­ed that, in ad­di­tion to this year’s VRP ini­tia­tive, in­creased sup­port is ex­tend­ed to schools tasked with ed­u­ca­tion de­liv­ery to this at-risk stu­dent pop­u­la­tion.

“ We must al­so con­sid­er the mat­ter of school place­ment. There have been in­stances in the past where stu­dents who re­quire re­me­di­al ed­u­ca­tion as they tran­si­tion in­to sec­ondary school are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly placed. In the ab­sence of re­sources at these in­sti­tu­tions, teach­ers face a se­ri­ous chal­lenge to keep stu­dents en­gaged. We know these stu­dents are of­ten sus­cep­ti­ble to high­er ab­sen­teeism and dropout rates as well as in­stances of school vi­o­lence. It is there­fore crit­i­cal that the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MOE) en­sures these schools are prop­er­ly staffed and sup­port­ed with so­cial work­ers and coun­sel­lors,” she said.

MP Haynes-Al­leyne re­it­er­at­ed her po­si­tion that da­ta-based tar­get­ed in­ter­ven­tions are es­sen­tial to the path for­ward, “Our stu­dents want to do well and they have the po­ten­tial to achieve their goals. It is our role as pol­i­cy-mak­ers, to use the in­for­ma­tion and re­sources at hand to pro­vide the best pos­si­ble en­vi­ron­ment for their suc­cess.”