Reformed NGSA placement structure being considered  – Guyana Chronicle

– Education Minister 

As the country achieves universal secondary education, the Ministry of Education is considering reworking secondary school placement structures for pupils after sitting the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA).

The new structure would see the top performing pupils placed at national, then regional secondary schools, and the remaining pupils placed at the secondary school closest to their homes.

This is according to Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand, as she made announcements at a sod-turning event in the City, on Monday.

“The ministry is currently exploring a reformed type of placement at NGSA. It can’t happen now. When we get all our [secondary] schools in place and there’s a secondary school available to every child then NGSA can serve the purpose of saying children who are extremely gifted are offered places at the national school, then the regional school, then everybody goes to a school close to their homes,” Minister Manickchand said.

The Ministry is currently on an aggressive plan to build several new secondary schools across the country, expand others, and rehabilitate some.

According to the Minister, the new format is being explored as something to be accomplished by 2027.
“We have begun to think that through. We cannot do it without access to secondary education that is universal across the country, and we don’t have universal secondary education [right now],” Minister Manickchand said.

She emphasized that the change in no way means that the Ministry is moving towards removing NGSA, while noting that the assessment is too significant.

“We are not ending NGSA; I want us to be very clear about that. Barbados, Trinidad and a couple other countries explored ending their primary exit examination, but it’s not happening, and that’s because it’s hard to do, for a variety of reasons. The exit exams measure a whole set of other things in addition to placement. So, I didn’t speak about ending it,” the Minister clarified.

Customarily written annually in April, the NGSA administers examinations to Grade Six pupils in Mathematics, English, Social Studies and Science. The scores attained by the pupils are used to assess their placement at a secondary school.

The examinations can often become very competitive and be a source of anxiety for the apprehensive pupils, who can, at times, feel pressured to do well at the examinations to earn a place at one of the country’s national secondary schools, all of which are based in the capital city.

Students with the highest marks are awarded a place at Queen’s College, followed by Bishop’s High and St Stanislaus College.

The perception is that students will be afforded a better secondary school education at the national secondary school over a secondary school closer to their homes or one with lower grades or lists.

However, Minister Manickchand explained that the Ministry’s vision for universal education will not only be about improving the number of secondary schools but will be a holistic plan that also looks at improving the quality of education being offered at the various community secondary schools.

“The quality should be so high in every school that it doesn’t matter what school you go to, you can shine and do well because whether you are coming to St Winefride’s, East Ruimveldt, Brickdam or Annandale, you are getting the same type of education. That’s the dream. That is not a dream we can work on only at the Ministry of Education,” the Minister noted.

The Minister said to achieve this, the Ministry will be demanding the best from teachers.

“The country has to want to move to a place where we demand performance from our teaching service and the administration of schools, because for every teacher that doesn’t teach its dozen of children; we are damaging dozens,” she added.

The Minister believes that the perception that students at national secondary schools are better off has to do with the high number of subjects these students often do at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE).

However, she indicated that there needs to be more equity in the reporting of the accomplishment being made by the other secondary schools, while she also reminded that a student does not need to do a large number of subjects to be accomplished.

“The truth is a child needs five subjects with Maths and English, you don’t need to write 24 subjects. If you can write 24, write it, but the schools not writing 24 are not necessarily failures. There are people at schools you never even heard about are doing enormously well. We are seeing better and better results at all the schools,” Manickchand explained.