THE results of the 2019 National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) were announced recently and I think the results of this year’s examinations give us a lot of things to talk about openly and use those discussions to think about the way forward.

This year, 14, 300 pupils who would have been preparing for the past few years of their lives sat the examinations. According to statistics provided by the Ministry of Education, 42 per cent of students who sat the examination obtained a score of 50 marks or more in Mathematics; in Science, the pass rate was 42 per cent; in English, it was 57 per cent and Social Studies, 39 per cent.

Taken in the context of pass rates over the past few years, these rates have remained relatively around the same. The pass rate of Mathematics moved from 13.85 per cent, in 2016 to 45.6 per cent in 2017, before dipping to 38.3 per cent in 2018. In 2019, it rose again. Now in 2019, Mathematics was the only subject that increased while the other subjects dipped.

Now, following the low pass rate in 2016, the MoE engaged in an emergency intervention for Mathematics and has been placing much attention on the subject subsequent to that.

One of my editors noted that these pass rates tell a more sordid story when you actually examine the figures. About 8,294 out of the 14,300 pupils failed Mathematics, 6,149 failed English, 8,723 failed Social Studies and about 8,237 pupils failed Science. Therefore, it seems just a bit starker when you show the actual number of persons instead of putting them as mere statistics.

Seeing these results gradually improve over the years is one thing, but what happens to these pupils that fail each year while we wait for the Ministry to implement better plans and programmes to ensure that the education system functions better for these children?

That brings us to this ‘top school’ situation. Many children, at the age of 10 or 11 years, are pressured to work their best to get into one of the six senior secondary schools in Guyana because it is widely accepted that the type of education offered at these schools is of a higher quality. Some also believe that there are better resources offered at these schools, and not to mention that there is a certain inherent prestige offered here.

But the children get into these schools based on a representative system of ranking, which means that only those children who perform even a few marks better will get into these schools. And not getting into these schools comes with its own set of ramifications, which in my opinion, manifests in stigma.

President David Granger, in a recent interview, said that he believes that the ‘exam’ should be seen as a normal part of a child’s education, and shouldn’t be used to label them as either ‘bright’ or ‘dull’.

Ideally, he related that it is his vision for Guyana to have a completely educated nation and that as far as he and his government are concerned, education is of paramount importance to every facet of life. And to this end, he shared that he is hoping to have a “top school” in each region.

Now the final thing to consider is the possibility of ending the NGSA. This is an idea that has been floating around the Caribbean for some time and which gained momentum last month with the Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley- who was a former Education Minister- saying that her administration would abolish that country’s 11-plus examination (their equivalent of the NGSA).

“We need to ensure that all students have access to good quality education and not only the few that are successful at the 11-plus [examinations],” Director of Economics at the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), Dr. Justin Ram said in Guyana recently. “It shouldn’t be the case that at age 11, your life chances are made up; too often I see that across the Caribbean.”

He is right. I personally don’t feel that at 11 years old you should be pressured into thinking that your life is made up from that decision. I’m 19 and thinking about the future can sometimes make me squeamish.

But abolishing NGSA is not just a flip of a switch. It will require other systems being put in place to facilitate that transition from one level of education to another. It will require that the primary education is brought up to a standard much higher than where about 7,000 students are failing subjects and it needs to take into account the diverse skills and talents children possess.