Three boys, two girls among top 2025 SEA performers

Carisa Lee

Re­porter

[email protected]

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Michael Dowlath has rein­tro­duced the pub­lic an­nounce­ment of the top-per­form­ing stu­dents in the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA).

Dur­ing an award cer­e­mo­ny at the min­istry’s St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain of­fice yes­ter­day, the five stu­dents who achieved the high­est scores were recog­nised.

They are Sand­hya Boodram Ma­haraj (Macaulay Gov­ern­ment); Xavier Teles­ford (pri­vate can­di­date); Nicholas Dol­ly (Ch­agua­nas Gov­ern­ment); Kailash Di­als­ingh (Ex­change Pres­by­ter­ian) and Ash­lyn Ramkissoon (Jor­dan Hill Pres­by­ter­ian), who were all award­ed for scor­ing the high­est marks in the April 10 ex­am.

The top five per­form­ing pri­ma­ry schools in­clude St Pe­ter’s Pri­vate, Trinidad Re­nais­sance Prepara­to­ry, San Fer­nan­do TML, Gand­hi Memo­r­i­al Vedic and Lu­cia’s Pri­vate.

“Now, I want to say that this Gov­ern­ment and this ad­min­is­tra­tion are based on mer­i­toc­ra­cy, and we want to recog­nise ex­cel­lence,” Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dowlath said at the event.

He added that af­ter the re­views were com­plet­ed, the re­sults of the top 200 SEA stu­dents will be pub­lished, not­ing that these stu­dent “who have demon­strat­ed aca­d­e­m­ic ex­cel­lence” will be an “in­spi­ra­tion to their peers and this na­tion.”

This year’s move to recog­nise the coun­try’s top per­form­ers came af­ter the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry stopped the prac­tice in 2020, un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion, af­ter a mix-up in the re­sults that year, which led to threats of le­gal ac­tion from par­ents.

At the time, the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry, un­der for­mer min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, stat­ed that the an­nounce­ment of top per­form­ers had a neg­a­tive im­pact on stu­dents and cre­at­ed un­healthy com­pet­i­tive­ness and pres­sure.

Be­fore 11 pm on Thurs­day, ex­cit­ed stu­dents start­ed log­ging in to see their re­sults, and some sent their re­ac­tions, which were record­ed, to Guardian Me­dia, show­ing their ela­tion, re­lief and tears of joy.

In the videos, Xara Marie Kissoon passed for her first choice - Holy Faith Con­vent, Cou­va; Zachary Ra­j­paul passed for Shi­va Boys’ Hin­du Col­lege, and Ebra­heem Jdid will be a form one stu­dent at Holy Cross Col­lege come Sep­tem­ber.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry’s sta­tis­tics, 11.65 per cent (2,082 stu­dents) scored 30 per cent or be­low, while 66.18 per cent (11,827 stu­dents) scored 50 per cent or above, and 2.36 per cent (421 stu­dents) scored 90 per cent or above.

The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter said there were im­prove­ments in Math­e­mat­ics and Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts, but a de­crease in Eng­lish Lan­guage writ­ing.

The na­tion­al mean scores in­clude Math­e­mat­ics: 52.1 per cent, Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts: 66.7 per cent and Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts Writ­ing: 56.2 per cent.

“That means over 6,000 stu­dents, more than one-third of all the stu­dents scored be­low 50 per cent,” he shared. For this year, 17,870 stu­dents wrote the ex­am.

He said this in­di­cat­ed that there is a learn­ing gap that all spe­cial­ist ed­u­ca­tors and oth­er stake­hold­ers will start to analyse so they can en­sure the cur­ricu­lum is tweaked be­fore the new aca­d­e­m­ic year.

“So, we’re go­ing to learn from the re­sults,” he said.

Dowlath said the sta­tis­tics will be shared through school su­per­vi­sors with teach­ers, prin­ci­pals and par­ents so they too can un­der­stand where the gaps are and how to fill them for suc­cess.

“Two thou­sand and eight-two stu­dents scored 30 per cent or be­low so that’s a con­cern for us too, and so as we go for­ward and we analyse this da­ta, we want to en­sure that at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, we look at those stu­dents, their per­for­mances and en­sure that in the up­com­ing year we re­struc­ture how we do the re­me­di­a­tion work, es­pe­cial­ly in nu­mer­a­cy and lit­er­a­cy,” he said.

The top five per­form­ers had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to share their SEA ex­pe­ri­ence with the au­di­ence and pos­si­bly the 2026 stu­dents now that they have achieved this mile­stone.

Pri­vate can­di­date Xavier Teles­ford said one thing he learned dur­ing the jour­ney was that suc­cess will come to all who yearn for it, as he re­called years of ear­ly morn­ings and SEA prac­tice tests.

“Friends and fam­i­ly in­spired me to per­se­vere even when times are tough, and for this I am eter­nal­ly grate­ful,” he said.

Nicholas Dol­ly, of Ch­agua­nas Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, said prepar­ing for the ex­am was a mem­o­rable ex­pe­ri­ence, while Macaulay Gov­ern­ment stu­dent Sand­hya Boodram Ma­haraj shared that be­liev­ing in her­self was what took her through the ex­am.

“Not al­low­ing neg­a­tive com­ments or doubt from oth­ers to af­fect me,” she re­vealed.

The soon-to-be Form One stu­dent said a healthy bal­ance be­tween school­work and re­lax­ation played a big role.

Mean­while, Kailash Di­als­ingh, of Ex­change Pres­by­ter­ian, ded­i­cat­ed his re­sult to his big broth­er, who was al­so a top SEA stu­dent.

“He has al­ways been my role mod­el, he paved the way for me and showed me what’s pos­si­ble when you work hard,” he said.

And Jor­dan Hill Pres­by­ter­ian’s top per­former, Ash­lyn Ramkissoon, shared her two-pronged recipe for ap­proach­ing the SEA ex­am, which in­cludes faith in God and hard work.