This year’s re­sults of the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) have sig­nalled some re­cov­ery from the chal­lenges ed­u­ca­tors and stu­dents faced dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, which saw a dis­mal de­cline in grades.

Ini­tial analy­sis by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion shows a mean Math­e­mat­ics score of 50.4, Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts Writ­ing of 53.4, and Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts of 61.6.

This is a sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment com­pared to 2022, fol­low­ing the tran­si­tion from face-to-face teach­ing to main­ly on­line class­es.

Last year, the mean Math­e­mat­ics score was 41.9, Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts Writ­ing was 44.3, and the Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts score was 44.3.

An­oth­er im­prove­ment seen this year was in the num­ber of chil­dren with over­all scores be­low 30 per cent, falling to 13.5 per cent in 2023 af­ter it had climbed from 17.7 per cent in 2021 to 27.8 per cent in 2022.

This re­cov­ery is a pos­i­tive re­flec­tion of the work done by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and school boards over the past year.

But this is just the restart. The poli­cies ex­e­cut­ed for suc­cess in these ex­ams must con­tin­ue, con­sid­er­ing that on­ly half of the 18,797 stu­dents passed Math­e­mat­ics, and just over half suc­ceed­ed in Lan­guage Arts Writ­ing.

There is still a long way to go to sus­tain high­er scores an­nu­al­ly.

For this rea­son, those who demon­strat­ed re­mark­able re­silience to achieve top marks should have been cel­e­brat­ed this week and held up as ex­am­ples for oth­ers to fol­low.

The de­ci­sion to no longer an­nounce the names of the top per­form­ers came af­ter a mix-up in the 2020 re­sults, which saw the par­ents of two pupils threat­en the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry with le­gal ac­tion over the award­ing of the Pres­i­dent’s Medal (Gold).

In sup­port of the min­istry, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in­sist­ed in Par­lia­ment back in Feb­ru­ary that the an­nounce­ment of top stu­dents was “whol­ly and to­tal­ly un­nec­es­sary and on­ly cre­ates dis­cord”.

Yet, for decades the sto­ries of re­silience and sac­ri­fice that the top per­form­ers ex­hib­it­ed to reach the pin­na­cle of their pri­ma­ry school jour­neys have helped to in­spire thou­sands of oth­ers, while al­so serv­ing to re­ward their ef­forts with pub­lic recog­ni­tion of their great­ness.

In that light, it is dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand how up­hold­ing the ex­cel­lent work done by our best stu­dents could re­sult in dis­cord if the min­istry’s ac­counts are ac­cu­rate.

By scrap­ping the process al­to­geth­er, it would ap­pear that in­stead of im­ple­ment­ing sys­tems to en­sure no re­peat of the 2020 con­tro­ver­sy, the min­istry has thrown the ba­by out with the bath wa­ter.

No oth­er na­tion­al frame­work ex­ists to­day that pub­licly recog­nis­es and cel­e­brates top SEA per­form­ers for their achieve­ments. It was the on­ly mo­ment in the spot­light as­sured to those who had put in the hard work and pro­duced the re­sults.

Gov­ern­ment should there­fore re­vis­it its de­ci­sion and re­sume the nam­ing of top per­form­ers, con­sid­er­ing it’s the very least we can do to cel­e­brate their achieve­ments and recog­nise the sac­ri­fices made to get there.