Con­grat­u­la­tions are in or­der for this year’s out­stand­ing Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) per­form­ers. Adam Ng Tang and David Ram­lakhan (Mon­trose Gov­ern­ment), Kather­ine Ad­jod­ha (St Pe­ter’s Pri­vate), Ama­ra Bat­tan (Curepe Pres­by­ter­ian), Shiv­an Khan (Ca­roni Hin­du), Shaz­ana Mo­hammed (Debe Hin­du), Liam Ra­j­nauth (Trinidad Re­nais­sance Prepara­to­ry), Ethan Ram­lack­hans­ingh (San Fer­nan­do TML) and Vivek Su­per­sad-Ma­haraj (Munroe Road Hin­du were in the top nine named by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

Their achieve­ment re­flects years of ded­i­ca­tion, the sup­port of par­ents and teach­ers and count­less hours of hard work. They de­serve every ac­co­lade. The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion al­so recog­nised the top 200 per­form­ers, high­light­ing ex­cel­lence across schools na­tion­wide. Their suc­cess is a re­minder that Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to pro­duce bright, ca­pa­ble young peo­ple with enor­mous po­ten­tial.

Yet, while the na­tion cel­e­brates these ac­com­plish­ments, it should not ig­nore the un­com­fort­able ques­tions raised by UN­ESCO’s lat­est Glob­al Ed­u­ca­tion Mon­i­tor­ing Re­port. If any­thing, this year’s SEA re­sults should serve as an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty to ask whether the ex­am­i­na­tion con­tin­ues to ful­fil the pur­pose for which it was cre­at­ed.

UN­ESCO’s as­sess­ment is dif­fi­cult to dis­miss. It ac­knowl­edges that Trinidad and To­ba­go has made re­mark­able progress by achiev­ing uni­ver­sal sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion and ex­pand­ing ac­cess through the con­struc­tion of new schools. Every child to­day has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to at­tend sec­ondary school, an achieve­ment that gen­er­a­tions be­fore could on­ly have imag­ined.

But ac­cess alone is not eq­ui­ty.

The re­port ar­gues that our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem con­tin­ues to de­ter­mine chil­dren’s fu­tures far too ear­ly, re­in­forc­ing so­cial and eco­nom­ic in­equal­i­ties in­stead of re­duc­ing them. That crit­i­cism goes to the heart of the SEA de­bate.

The ex­am­i­na­tion was in­tro­duced when sec­ondary school places were scarce. Its pre­cur­sors, the Col­lege Ex­hi­bi­tion and Com­mon En­trance ex­am­i­na­tions, ex­ist­ed be­cause there sim­ply were not enough spaces to ac­com­mo­date every child leav­ing pri­ma­ry school. SEA func­tioned as a gate­keep­er to lim­it­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties.

That ra­tio­nale has dis­ap­peared.

To­day, every child is guar­an­teed a place at sec­ondary school. Yet, SEA con­tin­ues to di­vide schools in­to per­ceived win­ners and losers, cre­at­ing a hi­er­ar­chy that shapes parental choic­es, stu­dent con­fi­dence and pub­lic per­cep­tion. Pres­ti­gious schools con­tin­ue to at­tract the high­est-per­form­ing stu­dents, while many oth­ers strug­gle against rep­u­ta­tions that be­come in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to over­come.

UN­ESCO al­so high­lights an­oth­er un­com­fort­able re­al­i­ty: fam­i­ly in­come re­mains one of the strongest pre­dic­tors of ed­u­ca­tion­al suc­cess. Par­ents with greater fi­nan­cial means can af­ford pri­vate lessons, ed­u­ca­tion­al re­sources and en­rich­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties that give their chil­dren a sig­nif­i­cant ad­van­tage. Those from poor­er house­holds of­ten be­gin the race sev­er­al steps be­hind.

The emo­tion­al cost can­not be over­looked ei­ther. For many 11 and 12-year-olds, SEA has be­come a source of ex­tra­or­di­nary anx­i­ety. Ed­u­ca­tors and men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als have re­peat­ed­ly warned about the psy­cho­log­i­cal strain placed on chil­dren who are made to be­lieve that one ex­am­i­na­tion will de­ter­mine the course of their lives.

None of this di­min­ish­es the achieve­ments of this year’s top per­form­ers. Ex­cel­lence should al­ways be recog­nised and en­cour­aged.

But the na­tion’s re­al chal­lenge ex­tends be­yond cel­e­brat­ing those who ex­celled. The goal should be en­sur­ing that every sec­ondary school of­fers the same qual­i­ty of teach­ing, op­por­tu­ni­ties and sup­port, so that a child’s fu­ture is not de­ter­mined by a sin­gle ex­am­i­na­tion or the name of the school on a place­ment slip.

Our top SEA stu­dents have passed their ex­am­i­na­tion with dis­tinc­tion. The larg­er ques­tion is whether T&T’s ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem can now pass the test that UN­ESCO has set be­fore it.