THE Education Ministry has announced that it would be focusing on monitoring both students and teachers in the primary sector under the theme “Literate by Grade 4 through consistent home, school and community involvement.”

At the recent commissioning of the St Agnes Primary School, Education Minister, Priya Manickchand explained that the ministry would be focusing on achieving quality learning outputs.

She explained: “If we have teachers coming in every day and teaching their hearts out, and we don’t measure frequently the quality of education and whether the students are learning, then we are getting nowhere.”

Minister Manickchand said the ministry’s focus would be on monitoring what happens in the classrooms through specific programmes that have been developed. “This does not mean we will have a big stick over anyone; but if we are to achieve our theme, then everyone has to play their part,” she said.

The Education Ministry will be focusing specifically on the primary sector, since, she said: “We believe that if our children are literate by grade 4, we have conquered half of the problem we face presently at the secondary education (level).”

Minister Manickchand further explained: “We are currently looking at whether the grades 2 and 4 examinations are being utilised and given the value that they initially were meant to give.”

She explained that the Education Ministry has, for some time, been monitoring the grades 2, 4 and 6, “because we found (that) when our children reach to grade 6, that’s when you learnt whether they knew anything or not on a national scale.”

The grades 2 and 4 examinations were introduced as diagnostic examinations. “Write these exams, let us see what you don’t know from what you do; let us see where this child is weak. When that is sorted, the school and parents have to work with that child to make sure you take the child from that level to a higher level by working on the weakness, so when the child reaches grade 4, they would have overcome those weaknesses,” the Education Minister explained.

Minister Manickchand expressed that, with the diagnostic examinations, the students’ weakness should be recognised easily, and teachers can therefore assist that student before the Grade 6 Examinations (NGSA).

“We are therefore re-examining these examinations to see if the teachers are using (them) to inform themselves of the weaknesses of the children, and all teachers will be under serious monitoring in the primary sector,” Minister Manickchand disclosed.

(Rebecca Ganesh-Ally)