Not every child per­forms at their best on the same day, and for ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers, that re­al­i­ty is at the cen­tre of re­newed dis­cus­sion about whether the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) should con­tin­ue to re­ly on a sin­gle high-stakes ex­am­i­na­tion.

The con­ver­sa­tion has resur­faced along­side this year’s SEA re­sults, as ed­u­ca­tion lead­ers again point to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of in­tro­duc­ing a Con­tin­u­ous As­sess­ment Com­po­nent (CAC) which would spread eval­u­a­tion across pri­ma­ry school years rather than de­pend­ing en­tire­ly on one test.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath said on Wednes­day that this year’s re­sults show “sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment,” speak­ing ahead of their of­fi­cial re­lease at the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce Tech Hub Is­lands Sum­mit, where he al­so high­light­ed the use of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence tools to sup­port Math­e­mat­ics prepa­ra­tion.