A 500-page UN­ESCO 2026 re­port says Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) con­tin­ues to de­ter­mine chil­dren’s fu­tures too ear­ly, sort­ing them by class and leav­ing poor­er stu­dents to bear the great­est dis­ad­van­tage.

In the glob­al re­port, pages 152–154 ar­gue that while Trinidad and To­ba­go has ex­pand­ed ac­cess to sec­ondary school places, the SEA still de­ter­mines who gets the “bet­ter start” in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

The find­ings, launched in Paris last month, come as 17,509 pupils re­ceive their SEA re­sults to­day, mark­ing the end of one stage of pri­ma­ry ed­u­ca­tion and the be­gin­ning of a place­ment process that UN­ESCO says con­tin­ues to re­pro­duce in­equal­i­ty.