Former Minister of Education Henry Jeffrey has criticised the decision by the Ministry of Education to discontinue using the National Grade Two and Grade Four assessments in the score to decide secondary school placement, saying it is “anti-working class.”
Writing in his “Future Notes” column in the May 4, 2016 edition of the Stabroek News, Jeffrey opined that secondary school placements based on the single National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA), like its predecessor the Secondary School Secondary Examination (SSEE), will do nothing to aid stakeholder participation.
He argued that working class people, many of whom live in fractured homes and poor conditions and who hardly have enough time to eke out a living much less be involved in a lengthy and apparently meaningless process, will suffer the most from the dismantling of the continuous assessment, which was implement in the 2006/2007 academic year. At the time, Jeffrey was the Minister of Education.
“Periodic consequential assessments, properly supported by the school system, can help to hold the interest of all stakeholders by providing a meaningful factor around which they can group to reflect upon, work towards and celebrate the results,” he said.
Jeffrey noted that while the vast majority of parents want students to do well at the final Grade Six examinations to get a good school, interest wanes by the middle grades of primary and peters out at the higher levels as children start to develop their own personalities and become more difficult to manage.
“If the vast majority of parents want their children to get a good secondary place at the end of the primary cycle but tend to lose interest before then, what are the factors that could help to hold the interest of not only parents but teachers, schools, school boards, etc throughout the school life of the child?” he asked.
Answering his own question, he presented what he terms “periodic consequential assessment” as “the single most important of these factors.
“To remove this feature after a decade without any proper explanation of why it is no longer necessary and what, if anything, will take its place is highly irresponsible and most likely will be consequential,” he wrote.
The Ministry of Education earlier this year indicated that “with immediate effect,” the weighting previously attributed to the Grades Two and Four assessments would stop and they would now be used “strictly for diagnostic purposes,” as was initially intended.
This decision was first communicated with teachers in a circular, dated October 26, 2015.
The Grade Two assessment was previously responsible for 5% of the final score, the Grade Four assessment 10% and the Grade Six assessment 85%.
In an invited comment after the decision to discontinue using the scores from the two assessments, Chief Education Officer Olato Sam had explained to Stabroek News that the ministry has continuously received representation for students who were absent for the Grade Two and Four assessments and felt that the evaluation and placement they received from the ministry was unfavourable.
These concerns, he noted, have led the ministry to return the assessment to their original purpose—informing the planning necessary to overcome weaknesses pupils may have.
In its most recent release, the ministry urged “schools to put necessary systems in place for the results of these assessments to be the basis of strategic intervention aimed at overcoming identified weaknesses of pupils.”
According to Jeffrey, this decision has removed from the two assessments any consequences, which could prove detrimental to the school system, since “assessments without consequences will not lead to change, and change in stakeholder behaviour is what is essential if the school system is to improve.”
He further argued that those likely to suffer more, “if no or only weak exhortatory efforts are made to enhance parental participation,” would be the working class.
