Gail Alexan­der

The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry has iden­ti­fied 80 pri­ma­ry schools where there was a no­tice­able de­crease in aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance in the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) 2022, when com­pared to the pre-pan­dem­ic pe­ri­od and mea­sures have been im­ple­ment­ed to im­prove that for SEA 2023.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly gave this in­for­ma­tion in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, in re­ply to queries from UNC MP Ani­ta Haynes.

Among the replies, Gads­by-Dol­ly said the Va­ca­tion Re­vi­sion Pro­gramme 2022 had cost $3,392,355, in­clud­ing cost of meals.

On spe­cif­ic plans with mea­sur­able out­comes to en­sure that SEA ex­am­i­na­tion re­sults im­prove in the 2022-2023 aca­d­e­m­ic year, Gads­by-Dol­ly said there are schools which con­tin­ue to demon­strate “an ac­cept­able lev­el of per­for­mance in the SEA.”

She said the min­istry’s Guide­lines for the Aca­d­e­m­ic Year 2022/2023 Term 1 for the re­open­ing of schools stip­u­lat­ed the fol­low­ing mea­sures to be ex­e­cut­ed at all pri­ma­ry schools:

• Teach­ing/learn­ing ac­tiv­i­ties in­volv­ing teacher-led re­vi­sion ex­er­cis­es where re­quired;

• Check­list of min­i­mum learn­ing out­comes that stu­dents should pos­sess at start of the school year to al­low for de­vel­op­ment of suit­ably de­signed test pa­pers for the school-lev­el di­ag­nos­tic tests;

• Analy­sis of school-lev­el di­ag­nos­tic as­sess­ments done by teach­ers and these find­ings will in­form on the de­vel­op­ment of work plans.

• Use of Cur­ricu­lum Guides to en­sure top­ics taught are in align­ment with schemes of work and dai­ly/week­ly plans.

She added, “Notwith­stand­ing the above guide­lines im­ple­ment­ed at all schools, the min­istry has iden­ti­fied 80 pri­ma­ry schools where there was a no­tice­able de­crease in aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance in the SEA 2022 when com­pared to the pre-pan­dem­ic pe­ri­od.”

The fol­low­ing ini­tia­tives are pro­posed to im­prove the SEA 2023 re­sults in these 80 schools:

• Train­ing of all teach­ers in Math­e­mat­ics, Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts and Writ­ing in Stan­dards 3, 4 and 5

• Af­ter-school class­es in Math­e­mat­ics and Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts con­duct­ed on­line for stu­dents in Stan­dards 4 and 5;

• An On­line Lit­er­a­cy Pro­gramme avail­able at all lev­els;

• Train­ing in lit­er­a­cy lead­er­ship tar­get­ing School-Based Man­age­ment Teams;

• Test prepa­ra­tion, en­sur­ing that the lev­el of dif­fi­cul­ty of sam­ple/mock tests match the Re­vised As­sess­ment Frame­work (SEA) for 2021-2023;

• Con­tin­ued pro­vi­sion of de­vices for the teach­ers and stu­dents to fa­cil­i­tate on­line learn­ing;

• As­sign­ment of Learn­ing Sup­port As­sis­tants to aid teach­ers in the Stan­dard 4 and 5 class­es;

• As­sess­ment of stu­dents to de­tect psy­cho-so­cial is­sues by the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and pro­vi­sion of sup­port to ad­dress same; and

• As­sign­ment of a ded­i­cat­ed School So­cial Work­er in each of the iden­ti­fied schools to as­sist in ad­dress­ing be­hav­iour­al chal­lenges on site.

Gads­by-Dol­ly added, “It’s an­tic­i­pat­ed that over the next three years, the Na­tion­al Means in Math­e­mat­ics and Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts will see an im­prove­ment and that there will be a de­crease in the num­ber of stu­dents scor­ing un­der 50% in the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment.”

On the 46,770 stu­dents who nev­er ac­cessed on­line learn­ing, which was not­ed in Jan­u­ary 2021, Gads­by-Dol­ly said many of them would have been re­ceiv­ing print­ed pack­ages from schools for ed­u­ca­tion­al con­ti­nu­ity.