19,000 to write SEA on Thursday

THE TOTAL number of students registered to write this year’s Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) exams to be held on Thursday is 19,883 — 10,000 less than those registered last year. The exams will be written at 547 centres throughout the country, and Education Minister Hazel Manning is promising that the results will be available by the first week of July. Last year, 29,814 students were registered to write the SEA, and 20,814 actually wrote the exams.

In the lead-up to this year’s exams, students have been preparing themselves by doing practice tests in the three components — Creative Writing, Language Arts and Mathematics. The students are expected to take it easy this week, and some schools have also scheduled church services. The exam is expected to last four and a quarter hours. The ministry has also promised that all students writing the exams will be placed in secondary schools, as it pursues its policy of universal secondary education.

There were 21,995 places in public and private secondary schools last year, of which 20,963 were available in Government and Government-assisted secondary schools. There were 1,032 places in private secondary schools, the Servol Junior Life Centre and in one pre-vocational school in Princes Town. When results were announced in July last year, 11,707 students were placed at five-and seven-year schools, of which 6,043 were girls and 5,664 were boys. Eight hundred and eighty-one students were placed in private secondary schools, 260 at Servol Life Centres, and 46 at the pre-vocational centre.  The results showed that 2,422 or 11.7 percent scored 30 percent or less in subject areas, up from 2003 when 10.4 percent of the students who sat the SEA were identified as low achievers.