SOME 13,657 pupils are anticipating the results of the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) examinations and Chief Education Officer (CEO), Marcel Hutson, said those results will be released during a news conference at the Boardroom of the Ministry of Education on Friday afternoon.

Hutson told the Guyana Chronicle during a telephone interview Tuesday morning that the ministry is currently making arrangements to release the results before the weekend. “We are working towards the end of the week. By the end of the week John Public will know,” Hutson told the Guyana Chronicle.

The Ministry of Education announced earlier this year that over 13,000 students from hundreds of primary schools across the country wrote the NGSA examinations on April 12 and 13. The education ministry came up with ways to improve performance of students in the exam after President David Granger expressed concerns about the poor performance in Mathematics at the NGSA level.

With government’s introduction of the Mathematics Intervention program in 2016 to help students develop clearer understanding in the arithmetic subject area, those who wrote the NGSA exam this year are expected to perform better, especially in Mathematics. For months the pupils and their teachers were exposed to the special program, which introduced a number of innovative ways to teach and practice Mathematics.

Additionally, the Grade Six students participated in three separate mock exams prior to NGSA, also in preparation for the actual examination. “This response by the Education Ministry follows President David Granger’s expressed concerns about the poor performance in Mathematics by students sitting the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA)… This initiative is a continuous process that will see positive results in the years to come that will also impact pupils’ performance at the CSEC and CAPE levels,” the Ministry said on its website.

Apart from that, former Minister of Education Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine visited several schools and gave motivational talks, guiding students on the rules and other necessary things preparing them for sitting of the exams. Meanwhile, thousands of pupils also wrote the National Grades Four and Two examinations. The CEO said those exams are now diagnostic in nature and results are now being used for remediation purposes. Results of the Grades Four and Two examinations are no longer included to make up the total NGSA examination scores.