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CHAIRMAN of Region 6 (East Berbice/Corentyne), Mr. David Armogan has deemed, as unacceptable, the results of the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) examinations which were written by 2,272 candidates last April.
He said only 3.08 percent gained more than 500 marks, which has secured places for them in the top secondary schools, nationally.
The pupils were drawn from 53 primary schools in the Region but Armogan noted that only 50 percent of the primary schools are performing at a reasonably good average, as the others are under performers in the region.
“There must be something that has got to be done, because, if you are sending poor raw material in the system, you cannot make gold out of straw and, therefore, it creates a lot of problems. You have to get specialised teachers to deal with some of these the low performing students and this is what we have not been doing.
“We need to strengthen the schools. Maybe, we need to rehire experienced teachers who have left the system and are still young and can still work. Maybe, we need to get them, because these schools will need special attention. Maybe, the young teachers who are coming out may not be able to deal with these young performers and that is why we have been having so much indiscipline in some of the low achieving schools. Because we have young teachers in these schools, there are children who are not easy to control and we have chaos,” Armogan stated.
He continued,”I think the time has come for us to pay attention to the low achieving schools and they can do well. I don’t believe people are dunce. Some people are late developers. Even though they come out of the primary school not doing too well, if you push them in the high school, some of them will, eventually, do well. And so we have to give them the opportunity. Not because we are getting the last grade of students coming into the secondary school that we must also put out the last grade of students. We have got to pay attention. I have seen students who have not done too well at the primary school but have gone to the high school, adapted themselves, applied themselves, studied hard, come out well from there and have gone to university and done better as they grow older.
“We cannot allow our children to fall by the wayside. They either go in the way of skills training or academics. But, everybody, at the end of the day, must come out with some kind of certification that makes them marketable. Otherwise it is a poor scenario,” the Chairman emphasised.
Meanwhile, in terms of children scoring over 500 marks, Armogan declared:”We should be having over 10 percent of our children getting over 500 marks. 3.08 percent is not what we are capable of.”
However, he noted that there is another range of marks called the middle, which is between 350 to 499 and of those, 1,496 pupils representing 66 percent received placements at junior and senior secondary schools.
Armogan said,“Then we have the stragglers, 706 of them came in with less that 350 marks. As far as I am concerned, students with less that 350 marks have failed the Common Entrance badly. If you look at how the Grade Six have been marked and if you look at the distribution, you will see that students are being given marks based on distribution. There is a distribution that they use in the marking system, so, when you see the 350, it does not mean that they have the full 350 marks. 350 is, basically, almost like failing the National Grade Six exams. That accounts for 31 percent of the pupils.
He said:”In a Region like this, where 31 percent of our pupils have been classified as failing the exams, it is a totally unacceptable situation. We have to focus more on the primary schools and do better.”
Armogan said another big problem is that some of the students, although they are allocated to the secondary schools in the Region, a lot of them cannot read and write properly and, therefore, they make the system difficult for the high school.
Six-year programme
“Because, if you are going into the secondary school and you cannot read and write properly, then you cannot be able to do any subject, because the basis of any is learning to read and, if you cannot read, you cannot do anything else. So what we have done in some of these schools, we have selected four schools and we are doing a six-year programme with Black Bush Polder Secondary, Vryman’s Erven Annex, Port Mourant Secondary and Manchester Secondary.
“Students at these institutions will take the first year to do basic Maths, Reading, Spelling and Basic Grammar, to bring them to a level where they get the basic idea in Mathematics and English on completing that first year and, having the basic understanding, then they will start the real secondary five years,” he explained.
Armogan said the base of any good student has to be at the primary level and most of the students who do well at the primary level go on to do well at the secondary level and those children who are poor performers in the primary level, some of them become dropouts and a lot of them don not do well, even though they pass through the secondary school system.
“This does not go well for us. I agree that they are high achievers but what will happen to the eighty percent of students who are not doing so well. For a country to develop, all of its people have got to do well, or a majority of students in the school system must do well, for us to develop and grow as a nation,” he posited.
Armogan maintained that education is the key to unlocking all the developmental things that and there is no place for people who have not come out with any type of certification at the end of their secondary school years.
“That is why we have started the basic competency system. If at third form, we find you are not academically inclined what we do is we give you a competency basic examination which is certified for persons to gain admission into the technical schools.
“The schools which are classified as top performing learning institutions, based on the number of students attaining marks in excess of 500 are Cumberland Primary (10); All Saints Primary (Seven); Cropper Primary (Six); Port Mourant Primary and Rose Hall Estate Primary (four each) and St. Therese Primary, which was once a top performing school, with persons pressing for placement there not so long ago .
Drifting back
“They seem to be drifting back. They have five students who gained in excess of 500 marks. I don’t think that is good enough for a once top performing school. However, in terms of the middle range, they have not done too badly. They have 112 students with between 350 and 499 marks. But, years ago , they used to produce, out of the top ten in the Region, sometimes six and seven used to come from St. Therese.
“With respect to middle range performance, some of the primary schools that have done well are All Saints, New Market, St. Therese, Tain Primary, New Amsterdam Primary, Cropper and Edinburgh. In the riverine areas, Siparuta and Orealla have not done well. We have to pay attention to some of these areas. Some poor performing schools are Bara Cara, from where nine students wrote the exams and eight attained places in the middle range and one in the lower range.
“Some of the schools which performed poorly are at Skeldon which used to be high performing. These are not doing well, like Skeldon Primary, to which we have to pay attention. This school was a previously high preforming institution. It is not what it supposed to be,” he lamented
Consequently, Armogan said the Regional Administration will be meeting with the Department of Education to identify some of the low performing schools in an effort to pay more attention to them .
About the cut off marks for schools, candidates who achieved 466 and above will be placed at Berbice High School and New Amsterdam Secondary. For J.C. Chandisingh 433 marks are required and 370 are acceptable for Line Path Secondary, another which previously was a high performing school.
For Corentyne Comprehensive High, a score of 390 is needed while attendance at Berbice Educational Institute and Tutorial Academy would require 385 and 372 marks, respectively.
He said only 3.08 percent gained more than 500 marks, which has secured places for them in the top secondary schools, nationally.
The pupils were drawn from 53 primary schools in the Region but Armogan noted that only 50 percent of the primary schools are performing at a reasonably good average, as the others are under performers in the region.
“There must be something that has got to be done, because, if you are sending poor raw material in the system, you cannot make gold out of straw and, therefore, it creates a lot of problems. You have to get specialised teachers to deal with some of these the low performing students and this is what we have not been doing.
“We need to strengthen the schools. Maybe, we need to rehire experienced teachers who have left the system and are still young and can still work. Maybe, we need to get them, because these schools will need special attention. Maybe, the young teachers who are coming out may not be able to deal with these young performers and that is why we have been having so much indiscipline in some of the low achieving schools. Because we have young teachers in these schools, there are children who are not easy to control and we have chaos,” Armogan stated.
He continued,”I think the time has come for us to pay attention to the low achieving schools and they can do well. I don’t believe people are dunce. Some people are late developers. Even though they come out of the primary school not doing too well, if you push them in the high school, some of them will, eventually, do well. And so we have to give them the opportunity. Not because we are getting the last grade of students coming into the secondary school that we must also put out the last grade of students. We have got to pay attention. I have seen students who have not done too well at the primary school but have gone to the high school, adapted themselves, applied themselves, studied hard, come out well from there and have gone to university and done better as they grow older.
“We cannot allow our children to fall by the wayside. They either go in the way of skills training or academics. But, everybody, at the end of the day, must come out with some kind of certification that makes them marketable. Otherwise it is a poor scenario,” the Chairman emphasised.
Meanwhile, in terms of children scoring over 500 marks, Armogan declared:”We should be having over 10 percent of our children getting over 500 marks. 3.08 percent is not what we are capable of.”
However, he noted that there is another range of marks called the middle, which is between 350 to 499 and of those, 1,496 pupils representing 66 percent received placements at junior and senior secondary schools.
Armogan said,“Then we have the stragglers, 706 of them came in with less that 350 marks. As far as I am concerned, students with less that 350 marks have failed the Common Entrance badly. If you look at how the Grade Six have been marked and if you look at the distribution, you will see that students are being given marks based on distribution. There is a distribution that they use in the marking system, so, when you see the 350, it does not mean that they have the full 350 marks. 350 is, basically, almost like failing the National Grade Six exams. That accounts for 31 percent of the pupils.
He said:”In a Region like this, where 31 percent of our pupils have been classified as failing the exams, it is a totally unacceptable situation. We have to focus more on the primary schools and do better.”
Armogan said another big problem is that some of the students, although they are allocated to the secondary schools in the Region, a lot of them cannot read and write properly and, therefore, they make the system difficult for the high school.
Six-year programme
“Because, if you are going into the secondary school and you cannot read and write properly, then you cannot be able to do any subject, because the basis of any is learning to read and, if you cannot read, you cannot do anything else. So what we have done in some of these schools, we have selected four schools and we are doing a six-year programme with Black Bush Polder Secondary, Vryman’s Erven Annex, Port Mourant Secondary and Manchester Secondary.
“Students at these institutions will take the first year to do basic Maths, Reading, Spelling and Basic Grammar, to bring them to a level where they get the basic idea in Mathematics and English on completing that first year and, having the basic understanding, then they will start the real secondary five years,” he explained.
Armogan said the base of any good student has to be at the primary level and most of the students who do well at the primary level go on to do well at the secondary level and those children who are poor performers in the primary level, some of them become dropouts and a lot of them don not do well, even though they pass through the secondary school system.
“This does not go well for us. I agree that they are high achievers but what will happen to the eighty percent of students who are not doing so well. For a country to develop, all of its people have got to do well, or a majority of students in the school system must do well, for us to develop and grow as a nation,” he posited.
Armogan maintained that education is the key to unlocking all the developmental things that and there is no place for people who have not come out with any type of certification at the end of their secondary school years.
“That is why we have started the basic competency system. If at third form, we find you are not academically inclined what we do is we give you a competency basic examination which is certified for persons to gain admission into the technical schools.
“The schools which are classified as top performing learning institutions, based on the number of students attaining marks in excess of 500 are Cumberland Primary (10); All Saints Primary (Seven); Cropper Primary (Six); Port Mourant Primary and Rose Hall Estate Primary (four each) and St. Therese Primary, which was once a top performing school, with persons pressing for placement there not so long ago .
Drifting back
“They seem to be drifting back. They have five students who gained in excess of 500 marks. I don’t think that is good enough for a once top performing school. However, in terms of the middle range, they have not done too badly. They have 112 students with between 350 and 499 marks. But, years ago , they used to produce, out of the top ten in the Region, sometimes six and seven used to come from St. Therese.
“With respect to middle range performance, some of the primary schools that have done well are All Saints, New Market, St. Therese, Tain Primary, New Amsterdam Primary, Cropper and Edinburgh. In the riverine areas, Siparuta and Orealla have not done well. We have to pay attention to some of these areas. Some poor performing schools are Bara Cara, from where nine students wrote the exams and eight attained places in the middle range and one in the lower range.
“Some of the schools which performed poorly are at Skeldon which used to be high performing. These are not doing well, like Skeldon Primary, to which we have to pay attention. This school was a previously high preforming institution. It is not what it supposed to be,” he lamented
Consequently, Armogan said the Regional Administration will be meeting with the Department of Education to identify some of the low performing schools in an effort to pay more attention to them .
About the cut off marks for schools, candidates who achieved 466 and above will be placed at Berbice High School and New Amsterdam Secondary. For J.C. Chandisingh 433 marks are required and 370 are acceptable for Line Path Secondary, another which previously was a high performing school.
For Corentyne Comprehensive High, a score of 390 is needed while attendance at Berbice Educational Institute and Tutorial Academy would require 385 and 372 marks, respectively.
