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Education Minister Anthony Garcia has mixed feelings about the 2018 Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) examination results.
“If I am to be truthful it is really with mixed feelings. I am happy at the performance of most of our students. In fact, the great majority of our students have done exceptionally well,” Garcia said yesterday when asked if he was pleased with the students’ overall performance.
However, Garcia said he was a “bit concerned” with the 2,500 students who scored below 30 per cent in the test, promising to reduce the figures.
Garcia shared his views at the Chaguanas Government Primary School where he announced students Rebekah Macoon and Kavel Pereira had tied for third place overall.
“I want to make sure that things are put in place so that those students will benefit from the type of education that we have to offer. A child spending seven years in a primary school must do much better than that. I am not saying this, but we are putting things in place to ensure this happens.”
Giving a breakdown of how students performed in the subjects areas, Garcia said in Mathematics they scored “slightly higher’ compared to last year.
“The area where there was a slight decrease was in Language Arts,” Garcia said.
At last week’s post-Cabinet media briefing, Garcia had stated that 65.5 per cent of the students attained above 50 per cent in the exam.
In Math, he said 58.8 per cent of the students scored above 50 per cent, while in English Language 57.9 per cent captured above 50 per cent, with 55.5 per cent obtaining above 50 per cent in Creative Writing.
He also stated that students under the age of 13 who scored below the 30 per cent mark will resit the exam, while student above the age of 13 will be placed in secondary schools with a special curriculum.
In May, 19,139 students wrote the examination. Of this figure, 9,645 were boys and 9,445 were girls.