Editorial
Newsday
On July 4, the Ministry of Education announced the aggregate statistics for the results of the 2025 Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) exam.
After a short hiatus from the practice, the ministry also announced the top five performers in the exam.
The long-standing practice of announcing top-performing students and schools was stopped in 2022 by the previous government.
Following that decision, the mother of Anushka Singh filed a freedom of information request to clarify that her daughter had received the highest mark in that year’s SEA exam.
Clearly, there is pride in academic accomplishment that should accompany exceptional results, but lionising the cream of the crop in an exam which will guide the quality of life for some students places significant emphasis on big wins without addressing the larger losses that the exam’s results reveal.
A total of 17,870 students sat the SEA this year. Of that number, 421 students scored 90 per cent or more. Among that select cadre are the five top students.
A celebration of their accomplishments must be matched by greater concern about the 44 per cent of students who scored less than 50 per cent in the exam and, more critically, the 2,082 students who scored 30 per cent or less.
In our distinctly hierarchical system of education, our best students are positioned to thrive, our most challenged face even greater challenges.
Students with a score of 50 per cent or less are most likely to be placed in public secondary schools, where they start secondary education in a race to catch up with fifth standard classwork.
This start from behind is the point at which focused remedial learning should begin.
Is there a plan to address this significant handicap?
A nation that hopes to improve its intellectual and human capacity cannot realistically hope to do so when 48 per cent of students entering secondary school have scored less than 50 per cent in mathematics and 44 per cent struggle to express themselves in writing.
Talking about artificial intelligence – a focus of the current administration – is pointless if so many of our students – this country’s future workforce – are failing the fundamentals of mathematical logic, reading comprehension and critical thinking. Reversing this programmed failure trajectory must occupy a more prominent place on the Education Ministry’s agenda.
In a future likely to be infused with AI tools which have already drunk deeply of the collective wisdom of the internet, both good and bad, understanding what quickly becomes superseded by understanding why and how, which are not currently an emphasis in the education system generally and in government secondary schools overwhelmingly.
AI is already shockingly good at regurgitating (and making up) facts. Our next generation workforce must be ready to challenge, analyse, refine and apply AI tools to the country’s benefit.
Critical thinking can’t wait for the university. It must be infused into preschool and primary education systems if this country hopes to be competitive in a decade.
