Maths intervention should start from Grade One

Feb 08, 2017 News

– GTU General Secretary
General Secretary for the Guyana Teachers’ Union, Coretta McDonald said yesterday that the mathematics intervention for students at the Grade Six level should not only apply to them, but rather should start at the foundation of the primary education, Grade One.
This assertion follows on the heels of the Ministry’s efforts to put in motion activities to intervene in unsatisfactory performances in Mathematics at the Grade Six level.
McDonald said that the Ministry of Education is focusing on Mathematics for the Grade Six levels and trying to find out if the strategy of teaching is not effective enough.
The Ministry recently discussed the difficulty levels and efforts to make mathematics fun. McDonald related that GTU likes and embraces the idea, “But when you focus only on Grade Six, the impact won’t matter”.
“When you recognize your house is shaking, you go back and start at the foundation,” she stressed.
“You should not wait for your child to reach Grade Six to start teaching them the basics. In fact, Grade Six is where you should do revision. To make the system effective it has to start at the very bottom.”
GTU is hoping that this initiative will lead to success, “But we have to keep following up on the process to make it to the kind of level we want to make it when it comes to Mathematics”, McDonald said.
Grade Six students countrywide started writing “mock” maths examinations from January 31, and this exercise will conclude on February 28.
Poor performance in Mathematics was last year identified as a matter of national urgency by Government.
The 2016 National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA), which is designed to place pupils into appropriate secondary level institutions, was written on April 27 and April 28. A total of 14,386 candidates were assessed in the subject areas of Mathematics, Science, Social Studies and English Language.
While the performance in English Language and Social Studies were consistent with previous years, this was not the same for Mathematics and Science. Both fell below what was obtained in previous years, the Minister of Education, Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine, had admitted.
For many years Guyana has consistently failed to achieve acceptable pass rates in Mathematics, an important core subject. Government has amplified in recent months that the previous approaches to this problem were evidently inadequate.
In its effort to address the daunting shortcoming, the Ministry of Education for the first time contracted the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) to conduct the examination for the Grade Six students in Guyana.
The basis of the assessment used by the CXC was radically different from what was used previously by the Ministry of Education. What was observed was that there was an increased focus on reasoning and a decreased emphasis on retention, Government had underscored.
The new method to testing as implemented by CXC had reportedly exposed even more weaknesses of the previous approach to education adopted by the Ministry of Education in previous years.
As part of a plan for short and medium term measures, Cabinet called on the Ministry of Education and its Technical Advisors to identify all appropriate steps needed to remedy the prevailing situation.
Those steps included remedial training of teachers, better and more varied text books, more teaching aids and better use of technology in the delivery of education.

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