Two-thirds of the top one percent of students who sat this year’s National Grade Six examination are from private schools.
The results released yesterday by the Ministry of Education show that 102 of the 158 students who make up the top 1% have been educated at 18 private schools across the country. This represent 64.6% of the country’s top performers. The remaining 56 or 35.4 students are shared among 35 public schools
Of the 18 private schools whose students have scored in the top 1%, Success Elementary has the highest number at 20 followed by Academy of Excellence with 17 students and Mae’s Under 12 with 15 students.
A majority of the primary schools which have students on the list have only one student. Leonora Secondary however managed to have 6 students who earned a place in the top 1%.
Minister of Education Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine has meanwhile once again stated that he is not satisfied with the results of the National Grade Six Assessment.
Speaking yesterday to media operatives gathered at the National Centre for Educational Resource Development (NCERD), the Minister said that it would be a bit hasty at this time to express satisfaction.
“I would like to see a little bit more concentration, more work and I would like to see teachers in the classrooms, really ensuring that their curriculums are delivered and received by the students and above all, I want to really lift the level of the education system. I think there is still a great deal to be done,” he noted.
This year marks the beginning of a collaboration between the Ministry and the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) to improve the quality of all primary grade assessments.
According to the Minis-try, the objective of this consultation is to ensure that all assessments conform to regional and international testing standards. Consequently, Guyanese educators developed the 2016 NGSA test items with technical guidance from CXC, addressing key areas such as item construction, weighting and sampling.
Last year when Dr Roopnaraine was asked to address the trend of private schools outpacing public schools, he had said that an “attempt to create a dichotomy or even a sense of rivalry” between the public and private school system is unnecessary.
Asked by Stabroek News whether an analysis of the performance of all students who sat the examination would be made public, Chief Education Officer Olato Sam said that was not the Ministry’s intention.
“We are in the process of examining students’ performance in every area of the examination but those reports are for the schools since it is they who will have to put systems in place to correct these matters,” Sam said.
14,386 students wrote the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) on the 27 and 28 of April 2016. This year marked the first time in nearly a decade students were placed using only the results of the Grade Six exam. In 2007 the Ministry had announced that students who had written the Grade Two assessment in 2003 and the Grade Four assessment in 2005 were awarded places at secondary schools based on a weighting of their scores at all three “assessments”. Since that time the grade two assessment was responsible for 5% of their final score, the grade four 10% while the grade six assessment was responsible for 85% until the Ministry declared in 2015 that these assessments will now be used “strictly for diagnostic purposes, as was initially intended.”
