{"id":3855,"date":"2012-06-30T21:16:37","date_gmt":"2012-07-01T02:16:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/?p=3855"},"modified":"2012-06-30T21:16:37","modified_gmt":"2012-07-01T02:16:37","slug":"how-well-are-our-primary-school-pupils-performing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/?p=3855","title":{"rendered":"How well are our Primary School pupils performing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that the Common Entrance Results are upon us at this time of the school year, it is important for us to find out more precisely how the pupils have performed at the end of their primary school career.\u00a0 The examination is officially called \u201cNational Grade Six Assessment\u2019, but it includes scores from the Grade Two Assessment and from the Grade Four Assessment in the proportion of 5 per cent and 10 per cent respectively.\u00a0 Therefore, the papers that the children wrote in the examination at the end of the Easter Term contribute 85 per cent towards the final grading for placement in a secondary school. \u00a0Hence, the performance in this final examination plays the major role in determining which school the child enters in September.\u00a0 However, it was the intention to include the scores at Grade Two and Grade Four so that the earlier performances would count and also provide direction for early remedial action where necessary.\u00a0 What is of concern now is whether more (percentage wise) pupils are \u2018passing\u2019 or<\/strong> \u2018failing\u2019 at Grade Six, than at Grades Two and Four?<\/strong> Will the Ministry of Education please tell us?<\/p>\n

As soon as the results are out, the TV, Press and Radio go to town with the news of the top candidates and the schools from which they come.\u00a0 This is rewarding for the children, their teachers and their parents, but these children are the very small minority.\u00a0 In April last it was reported that 17,000 pupils wrote the examination.\u00a0 The question to be answered is, \u201cHow many pupils got half of the question papers right?\u201d\u00a0 We do not want to hear the answer in terms of the highest possible scores.\u00a0 We want to know how many of the 17,000 candidates<\/strong> obtained a score of less than 400<\/strong>. \u00a0It was often said that, if you got a score of about 420, you got about half of the work right.\u00a0 We must know whether a higher percentage of the pupils completing the primary cycle and then proceeding to the secondary schools are really being \u00a0prepared to grapple with secondary school work now than five years ago or ten years ago. Will the Ministry of Education please tell us?<\/p>\n

The performance at the Grade Six examination is a clear indication of the ability of Primary School pupils to read and write.\u00a0 If half of them do not get half of the work right, it means that<\/strong> about half of them cannot read and write at the required level<\/strong>.\u00a0 This examination also tests the mastery of Basic Mathematics.\u00a0 How many of the children graduating from the Primary School system have successfully mastered their multiplication tables?\u00a0 When schools close at end of the first week in July for the long vacation, there will be remedial classes in some primary schools.\u00a0 Do these classes help?\u00a0 In some secondary schools there is a \u2018Pre-Form One class\u2019 to give the weaker entrants to secondary schooling a chance to catch up.\u00a0 Although the numbers in this \u2018extra\u2019 class are a reflection of the Primary Schools, it is not too early to find out how successful are all of these children.\u00a0 Will the Ministry of Education please tell us?<\/p>\n

And since education is the means to upward social mobility for everyone of all ethnic groups, we want to know whether the government Primary School system is succeeding in playing its role in helping to improve the performance of increasing numbers of its graduates.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that the Common Entrance Results are upon us at this time of the school year, it is important for us to find out more precisely how the pupils have performed at the end of their primary school career.\u00a0 The examination is officially called \u201cNational Grade Six Assessment\u2019, but it includes scores from the Grade […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7134,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[23],"class_list":["post-3855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latestnews","tag-featured"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/image001-2.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4F7T1-10b","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}