Months after refusing to make public an analysis of students’ performance at this year’s National Grade Six examination, government yesterday announced that cabinet as a matter of “extreme urgency and grave national importance” is examining the mathematics results which it is perturbed about.
This was revealed in a press release dispatched by the Ministry of the Presidency in which it was noted that the results were deliberated on when Cabinet met on Tuesday.
According to the release the results in mathematics nationwide were “unsatisfactory”.
“Senior officials from the Ministry of Education and Minister of Education Dr Rupert Roopnaraine were engaged by Cabinet on the declining performance of students in mathematics at this year’s Grade Six assessment,” the release said.
It added that for many years Guyana has “consistently failed to achieve acceptable pass rates” and that the previous approach to this problem has been inadequate.
According to the release, this year for the first time the Ministry of Education contracted the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) to conduct the examination for the Grade Six students in Guyana. “The basis of assessment used by the Caribbean Examinations Council was radically different from what was used previously by the Ministry of Education. This year there was an increased focus on reasoning and a decreased emphasis on retention,” the release pointed out.
It was noted that the new method of testing as implemented by CXC has exposed “even more the weakness of the previous approach to education adopted by the Ministry of Education in previous years.”
The release added that “Cabinet considers this situation one of national urgency requiring its focused attention and commitment to finding adequate and appropriate solutions in the shortest possible time.”
With regard to short and medium-term measures, the release said that Cabinet called on the Ministry of Education and its technical advisors to identify all appropriate steps needed to remedy this situation. “Those steps would include remedial training of teachers, better and more varied text books, more teaching aids and better use of technology in the delivery of education,” it stressed.
Following the examinations which were held on April 27 and 28, students had complained about the challenges they encountered which caused some to hand up their papers unfinished.
In June, shortly after the results were announced, Stabroek News had asked the then Chief Education Officer Olato Sam whether an analysis of the performance of all students would be made public but he responded that 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 had said.
Minister Roopnaraine had also used that occasion to express his dissatisfaction with the results.
“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 had noted.
Back in 2014, then Education Minister Priya Manickchand had said that Mathematics remained a major concern, with a decline from a pass rate of 43.94% in 2013 to 31.52% among the 15,227 candidates who sat the examinations that year.
She had also noted a decline of 9.6% among boys in Mathematics and 11.6% among the girls.
That year an analysis of the performance was made public. Nothing has been released since then.
