On­ly 17 per cent of pri­ma­ry school stu­dents and 27 per cent of teach­ers turned up for class­es to­day, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has re­port­ed.

Across the coun­try, that rep­re­sent­ed 16,819 stu­dents and 1,392 teach­ers. At de­nom­i­na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry Schools, the teacher and stu­dent at­ten­dance was 28 per cent and 20 per cent re­spec­tive­ly, while the cor­re­spond­ing at­ten­dance at gov­ern­ment schools was 24 per cent and 12 per cent re­spec­tive­ly.

At Sec­ondary Schools, there was at­ten­dance of 28,738 or 39 per cent of stu­dents, and 1,851 or 31 per cent teach­ers.

At de­nom­i­na­tion­al Sec­ondary Schools, the teacher and stu­dent at­ten­dance was 47 per cent and 68 per cent re­spec­tive­ly, while the cor­re­spond­ing at­ten­dance at gov­ern­ment schools was 25 per cent and 26 per cent re­spec­tive­ly.

"The re­turn of our stu­dents to the phys­i­cal class­room is a crit­i­cal mile­stone, and its im­por­tance can­not be over­stat­ed. The re­sults of our stan­dard­ized ter­mi­nal ex­am­i­na­tions, SEA to a greater ex­tent than CSEC and CAPE, show that there is much work to be done at all lev­els dur­ing this aca­d­e­m­ic year, which con­tin­ues un­til Ju­ly 7th, 2023, and much ground to be made up," the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion said.

It added, "The co­op­er­a­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween par­ents, stu­dents, teach­ers, ad­min­is­tra­tors, staff and ex­ec­u­tive of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, and all stake­hold­ers is para­mount for the trans­for­ma­tion of our Ed­u­ca­tion Sys­tem, and our re­cov­ery from the rav­ages of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic ex­pe­ri­ence."

"As our stu­dents con­tin­ue their ed­u­ca­tion­al jour­ney to­mor­row, Tues­day Sep­tem­ber 6th, 2022, let us all work with one pur­pose- the de­vel­op­ment of the cit­i­zens that will take Trinidad and To­ba­go on a tra­jec­to­ry of suc­cess to­wards the re­al­iza­tion of Vi­sion 2030."

To­day al­so marked the re­lease of CXC ex­am­i­na­tion re­sults for stu­dents who wrote CSEC and CAPE ex­am­i­na­tions in June/Ju­ly 2022.

With re­gard to per­for­mance at CSEC and CAPE, a to­tal of 7,597 can­di­dates (2,989 males and 4,608 fe­males) were reg­is­tered for CAPE Unit I and Unit II Ex­am­i­na­tions in 2022, for 33 Unit I and 30 Unit II sub­jects.

In 2022, 94.34 per cent (28,431) of writ­ten CAPE sub­ject en­tries achieved ac­cept­able pass­es i.e. Grades I-V com­pared to 93.93 per cent (30,926) in 2021.

In 2022, 70.78 per cent (21,333 sub­ject en­tries) at­tained Grades I, II and III, com­pared to 72.84 per cent (23,980) in 2021.

A to­tal of 20,456 can­di­dates (11,412 fe­males and 9,044) males) wrote the Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) ex­am­i­na­tion in 34 sub­jects in 2022.

Pass­ing grades (Grades I, II & III) were ob­tained in 62.72 per cent (67,845) of the sub­ject en­tries com­pared with 65.26 per cent (68.322) in 2021.

In 2022, 53.05 per cent (7,148) of the stu­dents writ­ing five or more CSEC sub­jects were suc­cess­ful in five or more sub­jects, com­pared to 54.1 per cent (7,487) in 2021.

Fur­ther, 43.66 per cent (5,789) of the stu­dents who at­tempt­ed five or more sub­jects in­clu­sive of Math­e­mat­ics and Eng­lish A were suc­cess­ful; the fig­ure for 2021 stood at 46.5 per cent (6,333) stu­dents.