–feel it serves a useful purpose at the end of the day

By Tamica Garnett

MANY parents and pupils are not in agreement with the scrapping of Guyana’s national secondary school entrance examination, the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA), as they feel that the annual examination serves as a motivation, pushing students towards performing better academically.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea at all. I really think this is a great boost to the children out there, because they work. They are doing this before they go on to CXC, so it’s getting them prepared for a tough road ahead. If you take that out, it will be just a laid back attitude,” opined Radika Lall, mother of Venisha Lall, one of the two top performers at this year’s NGSA.

Her sentiments were shared by her daughter, who does not think that scrapping the exam would be in the best interest of fellow pupils. She says she wants other pupils to feel the sense of accomplishment that she was able to enjoy in knowing that she did her best, and was able to achieve her goal of attaining the highest marks in the country.

“NGSA is basically knowing the child’s potential, so if there isn’t any NGSA, you wouldn’t know the child’s potential.” The 11-year-old said. “If you didn’t do well for NGSA, you would try harder next time. So if there isn’t NGSA, the child wouldn’t try harder to prove themselves,” she added.

For some years now, the NGSA has been viewed as somewhat of a stigma, due to the disappointment those children who don’t do well at the examination may feel, particularly if they are put down by their parents or others when they do not attain placement at a desired “top school”.

Althea Lewis’ son, Antwone DeSouza, was hoping to gain a place at a “top school”. However, after attaining only 400 marks, he was offered a place at South Ruimveldt Secondary. Lewis says she is still proud of her son, and because of the NGSA, he now knows where he stands in terms of his academic ability, and can use that as a springboard for his improvements.

She vehemently opposes the scrapping of the examination, as she believes that it actually encourages low achievers to strive to do better.
“I say that is nonsense, because some children they don’t really do good during the school term, but at exam, they really shine out and show what they can do,” she said. “It’s another way of boosting the children to do better, because they would know that that is a big examination. And most of them, that is the time that they put their mind to it and work harder,” she added.

FALLING BACK
Prior to getting into study mode for NGSA, she says Antwone had been falling back in his performance at school. But it was that motivation to get a good school which pushed him to start improving.

“He wasn’t doing so well in class,” Antwone’s mom said, “but now around the exam time, it pushed him a little more. He pushed and pushed, and that’s how he got 400 marks. To me, if he didn’t push, he might have gotten 300-and-something or something like that.”
At a recent private sector forum here, Director of Economics at the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), Dr. Justin Ram, called for the scrapping of the NGSA, thereby propelling Guyana into the longstanding wider debate as to whether standardised testing is beneficial to the education system, or is doing more harm to students who underperform.

“Is there still an 11-plus examination here in Guyana? I would want to recommend that you get rid of that,” Ram suggested, while addressing a gathering of private sector officials on July 5, 2019.

In Guyana, the NGSA is written at the end of primary school, testing pupils in Mathematics, English, Science and Social Studies to determine which secondary school they will be offered a place at based on how much they score overall.

All of the top secondary schools in the country are, each year, assigned minimum cut-off scores pupils must attain to be placed there. Pupils who did not score enough to get into these schools would attend junior secondary schools, which may be close to where they reside.

Ram noted, and it has been a long-held belief, that the examinations create disparity in the level of secondary school education that varying children will receive, as the top schools provide a better quality of education.

Leading the list of top secondary schools here in Guyana is Queen’s College; followed by The Bishops’ High; St Stanislaus College; St Rose’s High; St Joseph’s High; and President’s College. All are located in the city, which is often a hassle to get to for those top-performing pupils in far-flung regions across the country.

In one suggestion for adequately addressing this situation, was President David Granger’s call recently for the establishment of “top schools” in each of the country’s ten administrative regions.

Adding her voice to the issue, Minister of Education, Dr. Nicolette Henry, noted that while scrapping the ‘exam’ may be something to consider in the long-term, it is not something practical for Guyana’s current education environment.

But, is the examinations truly worth being scrapped, if the goal is give all students a level playing field?

Deodat Challu, whose daughter, Shivalli, scored 530 marks, making it the second highest score attained at the 2019 NGSA, believes that benefits gained in helping the underperforming students may come at the expense of the students that perform well if they are all placed together.

“It would affect the students that are doing well. The others would be slow learners, so the teacher would have to go over something one time, two time, three time. My thing is don’t scrap it,” Challu said.

His sentiments were shared by his wife, Ann.
“Every child is different; and they learn at different stages. Some are slow learners; some are fast learners, but it helps to prepare the child for secondary school,” she said.

A VITAL TOOL

Tracy Allen-Amsterdam believes that the evaluating of students is vital, and NGSA allows for that.

“It’s a way of assessing the students to determine how well they’re doing. That is what I actually use to assess my daughter to see where she’s at, and what she needs to work on in order for her to be successful,” related Allen-Amsterdam, whose daughter, Devine, also wrote the exam this year.

The NGSA examinations is also used to adjudge those underperforming students in need of remedial intervention, and in the development of new programmes to help those students based on their weaknesses. District Education Officer, Sherwyn Blackman, explained that under-achieving students at the NGSA are not simply discarded at a “low school” and forgotten.

For the past nine years the bottom one per cent performers at the NGSA have been placed in a one-year “Transition Class” in their respective regions, before entering secondary school.

After the NGSA, those students are also continually assessed to constantly gauge their progression, before they are placed in a secondary school. Blackman said that this strategy has had good results.

Many of the students who have had to go through the “Transition Class” before entering secondary school, he said, have gone on to do well at the secondary school exit exam, the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC), that administered by the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC).

“It is not a case that we would term it as failure,” Blackman said, adding:
“What we’ve found over the years is that when those students get to the CSEC (Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate) level a number of them perform well. Sometimes when you get to grade nine they are able to catch themselves up and be on par with the others.”
He maintains, however, that the assessment of students to know what their weaknesses are, and to be able to develop programmes to help them, is key, and that even if the NGSA were to be scrapped, students would still need to be evaluated, using some sort of assessment method.

“If we go that direction, we would still need some mechanism in terms of testing. It may be more diagnostic, as we go through, but we would still have to have some way of measuring that learning itself is taking place, because, in a system where we have to think about accountability, how do we know that the teachers are doing as much as they should?” he said.