2016 NGSA results are out, but was the process really controversial?

Jul 17, 2016 News

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By Sharmain Grainger

The results of the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) are out. Some education stakeholders are satisfied, some are indifferent, and others have not wasted time to share their concerns.
The concerns shared are mostly linked to several changes instituted by the Ministry of Education that became effective during the Assessment this year. The Ministry, a mere few weeks before the April sitting of the Assessment, announced the changes were being implemented. The late notice was not received well by some individuals. But there wasn’t too much of an outcry, or so it seemed.
However, from the get-go, one of the Ministry’s fierce critics was none other than the immediate past Minister of Education, Ms. Priya Manickchand.
The former Minister under the People’s Progressive Party regime found a number of faults with some aspects of the changes and the delay of the announcement to the stakeholders. She also slammed the fact that among the changes was that candidates for the first time had to write their names, and not merely their candidate number, as was customary since the inception of the NGSA.
But the Ministry touted the changes as necessary, since they would serve to ensure a more efficient means to provide proper tracking of the assessment papers in the event that a candidate number is written incorrectly or other potential issues occur. There was a claim that some of the issues that the Ministry was seeking to avert had emerged in the past, thus there was nothing sinister about applying the changes.
The support of the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) was retained to help put in place the changes. The Ministry assured too that the changes had nothing to do with the marking process.
There have been unconfirmed rumours that the marking process was delayed because an unprecedented number of children were not able to attain scores for senior secondary schools, thus prompting a re-marking process.
Chief Education Officer, Mr. Olato Sam, dispelled such reports when he said that there really was no delay. He insisted too that the release of the results was consistent with the timeframe embraced in the past. “The only difference this year is that we wrote the assessment three weeks later than the average and we took the same amount of time, about eight weeks,” Sam told reporters.
In fact, the Ministry’s Superintendent of Examinations, Ms. Sauda Kazim, made it clear that there really were no major issues with the NGSA this year, and she even spoke of plans for continued collaboration with CXC to produce the Assessment, at least for another few years.
The education officials made their respective pronouncements at a much publicized press conference at which the results were officially released.
And there was no reason not to believe them; after all in 2014 when the Ministry found irregularities with the assessment at a Region One school, it did not fail to share this with the media, and by extension the public. However, I do not recall the Ministry making known the outcome of a probe into that development. But I digress.
While in the Ministry’s estimation the marking process was not affected this year, in conformity with it’s earlier assurance, a Grade Six Teacher who has served the education system for over a decade was adamant that the changes did cause a great deal of controversy within the school system, much of which went unreported.
The controversy, the teacher said, started soon after the Ministry announced the changes to the Assessment – two weeks before it was slated to be written. The Assessment was written on April 27 and 28, 2016 and 14,386 candidates from across the country participated.
Now, the teacher in question has taught the Grade Six class at many schools over the years, but claimed to be taken aback when confronted with the mock assessment paper disseminated by the Ministry.
The teacher reported that some of terminologies used, particularly in the Mathematics Paper Two, were never before used in any grade six classes. According to the teacher, “my pupils were in shock from the minute they saw the CXC logo on the assessment paper…”
It wasn’t until after my exchange with this Grade Six teacher that I recalled that a number of NGSA candidates this year had complained that the Mathematics Paper Two was really tough. The majority of the top performers contacted by this publication admitted to this.
In an attempt to do whatever last-minute work was possible with the pupils, ahead of the Assessment, the teacher spoke of hustling through some CXC texts. Even as a trained graduate who has had experience at the secondary level, the teacher admitted that it was a significant challenge.
The teacher revealed that it was quite a task to first understand some of the concepts used, practice how to apply them, before helping the already daunted pupils.
The teacher believes everything possible was done in the short space of time, but is convinced the pupils could have performed a lot better had the changes not been applied this year.
Time was definitely needed to adjust to the changes. The teacher opined that it was all too sudden.
However, a number of the pupils the teacher worked tirelessly with have secured scores to attend senior secondary schools.
But this teacher’s concerns weren’t in isolation. Grade Six teachers do communicate, and the teacher was able to point me in the direction of a number of other equally concerned teachers.
There are some teachers from even far-flung areas who claimed they had it even worse. They alleged that their schools weren’t even furnished with mock assessment papers, and therefore were at an even greater disadvantage.
The Ministry is clearly not prepared to accept that there were challenges with the Assessment this year. It has, however, left itself opened for ridicule, simply because it opted to apply the changes at the ‘Eleventh Hour’.
Many teachers might want to argue that their pupils could have done so much better weren’t it for the changes, but we’ll never know. The die has already been cast and pupils will soon be focused on their secondary education.
Some of them are happy with the schools they scored marks for, some are sad they wouldn’t be able to attend the schools they’d dreamed of attending and others are probably just happy they can relax and enjoy their vacation.
Two pupils this year scored the identical marks, 568, and together share the country’s 2016 NGSA national top performer title. They are Anthony Ferreira of Mae’s Under 12 and Aryan Singh of Dharmic Rama Krishna.
Congratulations are in order for all those who made it into the always coveted top one per cent, as well as all the others, who despite of their performances, were entitled to a placement at a secondary level school.
I can only hope that the reported “toughness” of the NGSA this year has prepared them for the work at their new schools.

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