AS the Ministry of Education continues to work to ensure that every child has the necessary resources to facilitate learning, the improved performance in Mathematics and Science at this year’s National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) has not gone unnoticed.

At a ceremony held on Friday to announce this year’s results, Senior Manager of the Examinations Administration and Security, Teddy Rajan spoke about the remarkable improvements in the various subject areas.

Addressing the performance in Science, Rajan said that an upward trend is noted for 2023, and in this subject, just over 55 per cent of the pupils earned 50 per cent or more.

“The performance of 2023 must be applauded, as a mapping of zero score and full score has been reversed in a very significant way in 2023; 2023 represents the first year in a four-year period where more candidates attained full marks compared to zero score marks in Science,” he said.

Regarding the ‘positive’ trend in Mathematics, he said that the results has shown a significant improvement in candidates obtaining full marks.

“Performance in Mathematics aligned better to 2020 in 2023, showing significant improvements over 2022,” Rajan stated, while disclosing that the reliability for the Mathematics exam was 0.91.

In English, he revealed that the percentage of candidates who got 50 per cent and above is still above 60 per cent, and this trend has been seen within the last four years.

“In 2023, there was a 64.47 per cent attainment. The reliability of English was established at 0.71,” he pointed out.

He then went on to say: “Looking at the trend of candidates obtaining zero remains relatively flat over the last four years.”

On another note, Rajan commented that there was an overwhelming increase over 2022 with regard to students who obtained 100 per cent.
Turning the focus to Social Studies, he remarked that the overall performance at NGSA for this subject remains consistently over 50 per cent.

“Year on year, candidates earning 50 per cent or more remain consistently over 50 per cent of the performance; we see a decline of 0.3 per cent for 2023 over 2022,” he related.

It was also said that the reliability for social studies was 0.97.

Furthermore, the females’ performance when compared to 2022, has been corrected, and in fact, 17 candidates have been able to achieve full marks.

“As in English, the girls continue to outperform the boys year on year in Social Studies,” he said, adding: “More groups show an upwards trend in 2023 over 2022, which is encouraging.”

He labelled the remarkable performance by this year’s students as “historical.”

A slightly higher number of males compared to females wrote the assessment this year. The highest number of entries came from Regions Four (Demerara-Mahaica), Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara) and Six (East Berbice-Corentyne) and Georgetown.