…better showing expected for Math, English at NGSA

There have been significant improvements in the results of Mathematics and English Language at this year’s National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) with pass rate for the latter moving from the lowly 14% in 2016 to close to 50%, well-placed sources have confirmed. English Language overall pass rate is said to be over 50% also.

Results of the NGSA will be officially released on Friday. The improvement in Mathematics is very significant given the poor performance of students at this subject over the years and it will also vindicate government’s $48M injection into emergency intervention to strengthen the teaching capacity of Mathematics at the Grade 6 level in public schools last year.

In 2011, 62 per cent of students scored below 50 per cent in Mathematics, 59 per cent in English, 58 per cent in Science and 68 per cent in Social Studies. During the presentation of the 2017 Budget on Monday, Minister of Finance Winston Jordan revealed that of the 14,386 students who wrote the 2016 National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) only 14% or 2,014 students were able to achieve a passing grade in Mathematics and less than 50% achieved passes in English. Jordan stressed that these results represent a crisis since “over 12,000 of our children were not numerate, while more than half of those writing English could not sufficiently comprehend our official language to attain a 50 percent score.”

This is first time the government has revealed the pass rate for these subject areas at the 2016 sitting of the examination. The last time the pass rate for Grade Six Mathematics was made public was in 2014 when 31.52% of the 15,227 candidates who sat the examinations that year achieved 50% or more in the subject area.

Students across the countries have been struggling for years with Mathematics and the APNU+AFC Government had deemed this a crisis which needs fixing immediately. President David Granger had mandated former Minister of Education Dr Rupert Roopnaraine last year to meet with technical officers and staff of his ministry to find solutions to address the issue. Over the years, Guyana has failed to achieve acceptable pass rates in Mathematics, a critical core subject. This year the Ministry of Education has contracted the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) to conduct the examination for the Grade Six students here and it was discovered that the different assessment illustrated the deficiencies in the system.

Dr Roopnaraine had presented his report to Cabinet with several recommendations including the training of teachers in content and methodology; facilitating fortnightly cluster meetings in all regions; the recruitment of Mathematics coordinators and monitors; the training of officers and school administrators to supervise the teaching of Mathematics; the preparing and administering a diagnostic assessment of pupils in the hinterland regions before training; the enhancement of public relations, parental involvement in the education of the children and the acquisition of support material for the students.

“Having had a very thorough discussion on the matter, Cabinet approved the proposed plan and agreed to the allocation of a sum of $48, 682,690 for the expenditure and strategy that will deal with the issues before and up to the end of December 2016 and the allocation of a further sum to be spent on the strategy in 2017 and going forward,” State Minister Joseph Harmon had said. Some 13,657 pupils wrote the NGSA this year and Chief Education Officer (CEO), Marcel Hutson will release the results during a news conference at the Boardroom of the Ministry of Education on Friday afternoon. Grade Six students had participated in three separate mock exams prior to NGSA, also in preparation for the actual examination.