To­ba­go’s ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem is show­ing signs of progress, with more pri­ma­ry schools per­form­ing above the na­tion­al av­er­age in this year’s Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA), ac­cord­ing to the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, the di­vi­sion said the is­land still faces se­ri­ous chal­lenges, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Eng­lish, math­e­mat­ics, and the per­for­mance of boys.

Twelve schools scored above the na­tion­al av­er­age in 2025, com­pared to just five in pre­vi­ous years. Sec­re­tary of Ed­u­ca­tion, Zor­isha Hack­ett, de­scribed this as a sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ment and praised both stu­dents and ed­u­ca­tors.

“We want to cel­e­brate our con­sis­tent schools and in­di­vid­ual achiev­ers,” Hack­ett said. “Our goal is to de­vel­op a high­ly ed­u­cat­ed and in­no­v­a­tive pop­u­la­tion.”

How­ev­er, the over­all av­er­age score in To­ba­go—193.66—re­mains be­low the na­tion­al av­er­age of 200.

Hack­ett said one of the key rea­sons is, “Boys must score 10 points more on av­er­age for all of To­ba­go stu­dents to per­form above the na­tion­al mean. This un­der­scores the im­por­tance of fo­cus­ing on gen­der and the per­for­mance of boys in the To­ba­go ed­u­ca­tion dis­trict.”

She said the da­ta shows a wider gen­der gap due to the high num­ber of boys falling in­to the re­me­di­al cat­e­go­ry. Of the 134 stu­dents clas­si­fied as re­me­di­al, 95 were boys.

“We un­der­stand that again, based on the analy­sis, that we need to fo­cus not on­ly on our re­me­di­al stu­dents, but we al­so want to speak to the ac­cel­er­at­ed learn­er,” she said. “We had a case, for ex­am­ple, at the Belle Gar­den An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School with a Stan­dard 5 stu­dent be­ing just nine years old.”

She said the di­vi­sion’s sum­mer in­ter­ven­tion—Project Im­pact—will as­sist 400 stu­dents in lit­er­a­cy and nu­mer­a­cy from Ju­ly 14 to Au­gust 14.

“Fail­ure is not an op­tion,” ed­u­ca­tion re­searcher in the di­vi­sion Bob­by An­drews said be­fore adding, “Be­cause there are many things that come in the way of To­ba­go be­com­ing the great­est is­land on the plan­et, when our ed­u­ca­tion­al port­fo­lio or the pro­file of our stu­dents and our labour force do not show pos­i­tive di­rec­tions.”

An­drews point­ed out that poor per­for­mance in Eng­lish and math lim­its fu­ture aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess.

“If you fail Eng­lish and math, less than 5 per cent of stu­dents end up with five or more (CXC) sub­jects,” he said.

But even as some schools ex­cel, An­drews cau­tioned that re­sults show grow­ing in­equal­i­ty.

“We are see­ing a bit of po­lar­i­sa­tion, where, in as much as we have 12 schools do­ing ex­ceed­ing­ly well, we have 12 schools at the bot­tom,” he said. “Those are the mixed re­ac­tions that we would see that the da­ta presents.”

The di­vi­sion said that fix­ing the sys­tem will take ac­count­abil­i­ty, sup­port, and prop­er use of re­sources.

“We want to en­sure that when our stu­dents ma­tric­u­late out of pri­ma­ry school, they’re tru­ly ready for sec­ondary school,” Hack­ett said.