The NGSA’s wild swings raise red flags

Jun 29, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – Each year, a celebratory tone accompanies the release of the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) results, particularly when there are significant improvements. But there is something troubling about the NGSA that no one wants to admit. For those who bother to look beneath the surface, the wide and erratic swings in pass rates across subject areas over the past decade point to a disturbing conclusion: something may be fundamentally flawed with how the examination is being set and standardised.

Let us look at the mathematics results as a prime example. In 2016, just 13.85% of students passed mathematics. By 2017, that number had soared to 45.6%. That is more than a 300% increase in just one year. Then it dropped again in subsequent years, fluctuating wildly—38.3% in 2018, 42% in 2019, and then 39.43% in 2020. Fast forward to 2025, and suddenly we’re seeing 55.51%. That is a jump of 15 percentage points over the previous year. One would expect a national education system to progress steadily or even slowly—what we’re witnessing instead is a roller coaster.

The pattern is repeated in other subject areas. Science, for instance, had a dismal 27.55% pass rate in 2016. By 2022, it reached 55.11%—doubling over six years—before dropping slightly and then rebounding to 63.7% in 2025. English moved from 41.62% in 2016 to 69.25% in 2025. Even Social Studies, which has seen relatively more stable scores, had a bizarre jump from 52.88% in 2024 to 64.77% in 2025.

The year 2025 is particularly instructive. Most of the subject areas saw almost double-digit increases in pass rates over the previous year. Mathematics was up by 15.15 percentage points, English by 2.46, Social Studies by 11.89, and Science by 9.7. That translates into an overall improvement of nearly 14 percentage points. While this might be good political news, it raises serious statistical and pedagogical questions. Improvements of that magnitude—across all subject areas, in one year—are not typical in any well-calibrated, standardized testing system.

What explains these wide variations? Were the children in 2025 that much better taught? Were the schools more resourced? Was the teaching method reformed overnight? None of those structural reforms have been tested or evaluated. The more likely explanation is that the exam itself may lack consistency in difficulty level and design. If the exams vary significantly in difficulty each year, then comparing pass rates across years becomes meaningless. It also means that some children are being unfairly disadvantaged simply because of the year they happened to write the assessment.

The use of standardised and T-scores, as is presently the case, should mitigate wild swings. Given the 2025 data—with double-digit jumps in almost every subject—it’s reasonable to question what is taking place with this examination. If there is consistency in the degree of difficulty, design and marking of the examination, we would expect modest, steady improvements, not statistical see-saws. A reliable standardised test should exhibit modest variations from year to year—not swings that we are seeing.

The NGSA is supposed to be the most important academic assessment in the lives of eleven-year-old children in Guyana. It determines their school placement and, arguably, their trajectory in the secondary school system. That such an important tool is exhibiting volatility suggests that it may not be the firm and fair instrument it purports to be.

The Ministry of Education owes the public some clear answers. How is the NGSA set each year? Who reviews it for consistency and fairness? What benchmarking is used to ensure that the test does not swing wildly in difficulty? If the Ministry does not already have a psychometrician—an expert in the science of testing and measurement—it urgently needs to retain one.

No amount of press conferences or PowerPoint slides can conceal what the numbers plainly reveal: the system is unstable. A national exam should be an anchor, not a weather vane. If it can’t provide a stable and fair measure of what students know, then it becomes not just a technical problem—it becomes a moral one. Because then, we are toying with the futures of children who deserve much better.

In light of the erratic year-to-year swings, it is imperative that a comprehensive technical evaluation of the examination and its results be undertaken. This review should involve independent educational measurement specialists, psychometricians, and data analysts who can assess whether the NGSA is adhering to international standards of fairness, reliability, and comparability.

While this suggestion may take the smile off the face of the Minister of Education, without such an expert-led audit, questions will continue to linger about the credibility of the assessment and the credibility of the reported gains.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.) 

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• Mathematics results, NGSA, Peeping Tom, Redflags

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