SEA Top Performers awards ceremony returns

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­[email protected]

The Gov­ern­ment has re­in­stat­ed the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) top per­form­ers awards cer­e­mo­ny, a tra­di­tion that had been shelved un­der the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM)-ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Last Thurs­day, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MoE) ho­n­oured the top 200 SEA 2025 per­form­ers, which in­clud­ed stu­dents from 77 pri­ma­ry schools across the na­tion.

Among them were three stu­dents ty­ing for first place in­clud­ing for­mer stu­dent of Macaulay Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School Sand­hya Ma­haraj, Nicholas Dol­ly and Xavier Teles­ford.

Kailash Di­als­ingh came fourth and fifth place went to Ash­lyn Ramkissoon.

Of the 200 top per­form­ers, 123 were fe­male and 77 were male.

Ad­dress­ing the stu­dents at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath con­grat­u­lat­ed both the stu­dents and their teach­ers for their hard work.

Dr Dowlath said, "This event marks not on­ly the recog­ni­tion of our na­tion’s most out­stand­ing stu­dents but al­so the re­turn of this im­por­tant na­tion­al tra­di­tion ho­n­our­ing aca­d­e­m­ic ex­cel­lence… Young peo­ple who have demon­strat­ed ex­cep­tion­al ded­i­ca­tion and aca­d­e­m­ic ex­cel­lence. What is par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy is the dis­tri­b­u­tion among our high achiev­ers of the 200 top per­form­ing stu­dents, 123 are fe­male and 77 are male. And these stu­dents come from 77 schools. From all of our ed­u­ca­tion­al dis­tricts in Trinidad and To­ba­go. I want to con­grat­u­late all our schools and stu­dents."

He added, "Ed­u­ca­tion must be a space where every child, re­gard­less of gen­der, has the sup­port and op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­cel. The re­al­i­ty re­flect­ed in these fig­ures re­minds us that at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and in all our schools, we must con­tin­ue to close that gap. At the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, we be­lieve that every child can learn. So must en­sure that our boys are equal­ly en­gaged, sup­port­ed and in­spired in the learn­ing process. There­fore, as a Min­istry and as a coun­try, we must con­tin­ue build­ing en­vi­ron­ments where all stu­dents, boys and girls alike, see ed­u­ca­tion as a path­way to pur­pose, to achieve­ment and na­tion­al con­tri­bu­tion."