“It is something to consider” was the response given by Director of Education Clare Browne over the matter of implementing a national assessment in secondary schools.
The question was posed to the top education official last week while speaking at the press conference for the release of this year’s CSEC results.
Browne did explain that it was something the ministry could look into doing as a means of gauging the readiness of students before they prepare to sit the external CSEC examinations, more so, for those subject areas that traditionally see weaker performances like Mathematics.
“When you offer several subjects in schools, to come up with a national exam, you can’t just have one national exam. You are going to have to have an examination in English, an examination in Math, but it is probably something to ponder. Maybe we need to do it in Math as one of the ways we look at and track and so on.
“A subject like Physical Education, some subjects, you always get a 99% pass rate, somewhere up there, and you ask is it necessary to do that, perhaps not, but maybe in a struggling area you want to just do some tracking. If we have to come to a national exam maybe I would say in any kind of weak areas, we might want to do it. It is something for us to think about at the Ministry of Education,” Browne said.
Such assessments are commonplace at the primary school level, with ‘exams’ done at Grade Two and Grade Four to test the development of the students before they sit the school-leaving exam at Grade Six.
While it may take some time for that secondary-level assessment to be put in place, if at all, the Education Director noted that there is already an option available to students at some of the nation’s schools.
“There is the CCSLC (Caribbean Certificate of Secondary Level Competence) examination that is offered at Third Form. Now some schools opt not to really do the exam because there is a cost to it, and so they teach the modules because it is excellent syllabuses, but in terms of doing the exam, they don’t really do it. Three schools offer that possibility at this time. One private school, Trinity Academy, and two public schools, Princess Margaret School as well as the Sir Novelle Richards Academy,” Browne concluded.
