A total of 1,396 students in public and private schools, along with three pupils who are home schooled, will sit the first of their four exams today for the Grade Six National Assessment.
The final preparations were made yesterday by the Ministry of Education that will be administering the exams at over 50 centres, following the same format that was used last year.
“Students will remain at their schools. So, we have 53 centres which is different to what pertained pre-Covid. We usually merge schools at large centres, but we’re following last year’s procedures so we are using the schools and keeping the children in their ‘bubbles’,” explained Education Officer for Measurement and Evaluation, Ineta Francis.
“The supervisors will be persons that we send in, the readers for those persons who need the accommodation will be people that we send in. However, the invigilators will come from the school itself, from the teachers who work in the lower part of the school.”
Special arrangements are also in place for those students who may need additional help.
“We have what we call special accommodations that are offered. The names of students who require such assistance will come from the Special Education Unit. They compile a list and, depending on what accommodation would have been indicated, the student will be given that.
“Majority of the students would need reader assistance and so, they would have a separate reading room set up and we provide that reader to offer that support to those students,” Francis said.
Students will sit Language Arts and Science today while Mathematics and Social Studies will be taken tomorrow.
Following the administration of the four core subjects, the tabulation of the results will take place for two weeks.
“The marking is coordinated by our education officers for the four core areas and they have specific areas where they will go to do their marking. The marking takes roughly up to two weeks and during that process we also have input of data into the electronic mark books, and while the marking is going on, at the same time we are entering scores into the electronic mark books so that at the end of that process, we will have completed mark books that we will then validate.
“The validation process is to ensure that scores have been entered correctly and that will take a few days. Following the validation, we do the analysis of the scores and then after that part is done, we will then do the placement of the students into the various secondary schools,” Francis detailed.
It is the ministry’s hope that results will be released to the schools by July 1.