Grade Six National Assessment off to a good start

By Aabigayle McIntosh

Day one of the Grade Six National Assessment ran smoothly in the 53 registration centres across the island on Wednesday.

The students were assessed in Language Arts and Science during the first day of the two-day exercise.

Education Officer, Measurement and Evaluation Ineta Francis said while the assessment is conducted around this time each year preparation begins in January.

“It begins with the script writers writing the questions, us reviewing the questions, editing, printing, packaging and the like Wednesday morning the supervisors would come in and collect their packages for the various centres,” she said in an interview with the Ministry’s Communication team.

A similar process will take place again today when students will be sitting Mathematics Papers One and Two and Social Studies Papers One and Two.

Twelve hundred and ninety-six students have registered for the assessment this year. Of that number 653 are males and 643 are females.

Additionally, 553 students are from private institutions and 743 from public schools.

“Over the last three or four years the numbers have been around that 1300 hundred mark. Last year was the same number give and take one or two from there,” she said.

After the examinations are completed, the marking process begins and this process falls under the responsibility of the Education Officers in charge of the four core areas.

“They have a team of teachers who mark with them, it takes place about 8 days then following that we have our scores imputed an electronic mark book. After all the marks are submitted, then we do an assessment of those marks and then we load our information into that database and that’s when we know who would have done what,” Francis said.

Francis said on July 5th a presentation will be made to Education officials and principals as to the results.

As you may be aware, two days of the annual Grade 6 National Assessment commenced this morning (Wednesday)

Education Officer, Measurement and Evaluation, Ineta Francis, was extremely busy on Tuesday and could not speak to the preparations, readiness etc.

However, she spoke briefly this morning in a recording that is attached to this email.