The Ministry of Education has credited measures from its five-year Education Strategic Plan for notable increases in the number of passes in English and Mathematics and an overall pass rate of 66% in the 2010 CSEC examinations.
According to a press release from the Education Ministry, Minister of Education Shaik Baksh told a recent forum that for English the pass rate—grades one to three—jumped from 50% in 2009 to 59% last year. The figure, the Ministry noted, was way above the 50% targeted in the 2008-2013 Education Strategic Plan. Performance in Mathematics also improved, moving from 30% in 2009 to 35% in 2010, bringing it closer to the 40% benchmark set in the Plan.
Despite this, the Ministry said it continues to implement a range of measures to produce more improvements this year. “CDs with complete lessons in Mathematics and English at the CSEC level have been submitted to all schools, resource personnel at NCERD have been assigned to work with schools that need assistance in these two areas and head-teachers have been asked to allocate more time to these two subjects at Grade II,” it noted.
Baksh said the Ministry has also institutionalised continuous remediation in Mathematics and English at both primary and secondary schools. At the National Grade Six Assessment, the percentage of pupils who gained 50 per cent and more in Mathematics moved from 21% in 2009 to 34% last year; Science, from 23% in 2009 to 33% in 2010; and Social Studies from 32% in 2009 to 34% last year. However, a 3% decline from 27% was also recorded in English for the same period, the Ministry said.
