By Theresa Goodwin
Educational officials are noting several positive trends emanating from the Grade Six National Assessment results which were released to the media on Friday.
Some of the trends highlighted by Education Officer with responsibility for Measurement and Evaluation, Ineta Edwards, were the performance of students in the four core subject areas, and the performance of boys.
There were improvements in the area of Language Arts and Science, while there were slight decreases in Mathematics and Social Studies.
“In 2021, Language Arts had a mean score of 63, this year the mean score is 65, so there is a slight improvement in terms of performance there. In Mathematics last year, we had 57, this year we have 56, a slight decrease. Science had 58 last year, 62 this year – a marked improvement over last year’s performance. In Social Studies, we had 71 last year 69 this year slight decrease in performance there”.
Students are placed in different levels depending on their performance, those earning scores between 260 and 400 are placed in the Level One category, while Level 2 refers to scores between 180 and 259, Level three – scores between 102 and 179 – and Level Four, scores between 0 and 101.
There was a slight increase in the number of children scoring at level 1, the highest level
“In 2021, we had 55 students who performed at level 1 or 45 percent, this year we had 52 students, but our percentage is slightly higher at 47 percent. At Level 2, we had 592 students in 2021 at 41 percent, and for 2022 the percentage remained the same although the number increased for 2022 to 562. At level 3 in 2021, we have 181 students for 13 percent and in 2021 we had 154 students or 11 percent, a slightly better performance than we had last year. As it relates to level 4 last year, we had 17 students, this year, we had 15, similar to the percentage of students who fell into that level,” Francis said.
Francis also revealed that more boys, 44 to be exact, ranked in the top 100 when compared to 33 last year. There was also an improvement in the marks for those included in the top list.
Public schools were also singled out for their exceptional performances. Eleven government institutions are featured in the top 100.