The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MoE) will no longer be ad­min­is­ter­ing the Na­tion­al Test to stu­dents and will now be­ing us­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Learn­ing As­sess­ment.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the min­istry said it has col­lect­ed, and analysed stu­dent per­for­mance da­ta at Stan­dards 1, 3 and Form 3 us­ing the Na­tion­al Test and the Na­tion­al Cer­tifi­cate of Sec­ondary Ex­am­i­na­tions (NCSE) re­spec­tive­ly.

How­ev­er, it said it has re­viewed the con­tent and ad­min­is­tra­tion of these Na­tion­al As­sess­ments and has made ad­just­ments which will in­crease the ef­fi­cien­cy of da­ta col­lec­tion with­out sac­ri­fic­ing its qual­i­ty or use­ful­ness. The Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Learn­ing As­sess­ment (TTNLA) will re­place the Na­tion­al Test and NCSE, and will be used to pro­vide na­tion­al da­ta on stu­dent per­for­mance at Stan­dard One, Three and Form Three lev­els.

The new as­sess­ment will be based on ex­ist­ing cur­ricu­lum guides in Math­e­mat­ics and Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts on­ly and will be done at ran­dom dur­ing Term III of each aca­d­e­m­ic year.

The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry added all stu­dents at the Stan­dard One, Three and Form One lev­els will not be test­ed, nor will all schools be se­lect­ed for test­ing in any one aca­d­e­m­ic year; and in­di­vid­ual re­sults will not be is­sued to stu­dents or schools.

In ad­di­tion, no con­tin­u­ous as­sess­ment scores will be re­quired for the scor­ing of the TTNLA and sur­veys will be ad­min­is­tered to prin­ci­pals, par­ents, teach­ers and stu­dents.