–Education Ministry says policy changes aimed at serving best interest of candidates

ALL is set for the writing of the 2021 National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) on Wednesday, August 4 and Thursday, August 5, 2021.

On Wednesday, Grade Six pupils will be writing English papers two and one in the morning and Science papers one and two in the afternoon. While on Thursday, candidates will be writing Mathematics papers one and two in the morning and Social Studies papers one and two in the afternoon.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, regulations and guidelines have been established to ensure the safe and incident-free writing of this examination.
These measures include the sanitising and washing of hands before entering examination buildings, the wearing of the recommended face mask, observing and maintaining social distancing at all times and the cleaning and sanitising of buildings and furniture.

Also, candidates are not required to wear their respective primary school uniforms. In the case where a child is not dressed in uniform, they must be dressed modestly and as best as possible with clothes that bear little or no writing, pictures and or diagrams that would give cause or contribute to any form of cheating.

Candidates will be allowed to leave the examination centres to have lunch but must return at least 15 minutes before the beginning of the next session.
Candidates can take a bottle of water or suitable liquid to drink into the examination room once the bottle has no writing that can aid the student in the examination.
This year, there are 33 new examination centres spread across the eleven education districts where candidates will be writing the examination.

This was done to make the lives of children and their parents easier by eliminating the burden of having to travel long distances to get to their respective exam centres, which were not the schools they attended.
In addition to the examination centres, the Ministry of Education has established emergency centres that can accommodate those candidates who might have tested positive for COVID-19 or are in quarantine.

This was done for the 2021 CSEC and CAPE examinations, whereby COVID-19 positive candidates were accommodated and allowed to write their examinations in a separate building.
Parents of COVID-19-positive children or children in quarantine are asked to contact the school’s headteacher or the Department of Education in their particular region. Parents could also call 226–1237 to make the necessary arrangements.

Further, as of this year, candidates who are 12 years and seven months, and older will not be penalised with respect to their raw scores as in previous years.
This category of candidates will have their raw scores standardised in the same way as all other candidates.

In addition, the individual subject scores for each candidate will be given to decimal places and their total score will be rounded to the nearest whole number.  This is to ensure a more accurate reflection of each candidate’s performance.

Moreover, to ensure candidates are prepared to write the examination, the Ministry of Education implemented several interventions. All Grade Six students in the public education system have received a NGSA care package containing face masks, pencils, erasers, sharpener, hand sanitiser and ruler.

Also, to help pupils prepare for the examination, each pupil was given a study package containing social studies and science notes, worksheets for the four subjects, past papers from the last five years and 12 textbooks on the four subject areas of English, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies.

Further, the Ministry of Education also launched its Quiz Me Platform on its website which offers students the opportunity to practice NGSA-type questions and be given their results instantaneously.

The NGSA booster programme was also launched whereby local teachers are recorded teaching the topics which can feature on the examination.
These videos are aired on the Guyana Learning Channel according to a timetabled schedule and are also available for streaming on the Guyana Learning Channel’s YouTube channel.

All of those interventions catered to the consolidated curriculum which the ministry prepared to cater for the reduced hours students were engaged.
The Ministry of Education wished all pupils the very best in their examination and committed to continue working in their best interest.