Govt committed to ensuring pupils receive high-quality secondary education – Education Minister

…as over 16,000 students sit NGSA

The National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) began Wednesday with more than 16,000 students sitting the examination nationwide.
On Wednesday, the students completed the English and Science sections and today, the examination will conclude with Mathematics and Social Studies.
Speaking with

Guyana Times, after day one of the examination, students from various schools across Georgetown related facing challenges and difficulties in the Science section, specifically paper two.
Kayla Paterson of St Angela’s Primary related, “It was really good, but Science Paper Two was a little bit hard for us today.”
Paterson, who is aiming to become a student of St Joseph Secondary, expressed that science was the only area she may have fallen short in and she would be well prepared for today’s challenges in Mathematics and Social Studies.
“…I will be ready…,” she said.
“Science paper two hurt we head. I have to go home tonight (Wednesday night) and study for Social Studies,” Kelly Sudasiday of St Agnes Primary said.

“It was good but it’s was hard, really hard,” Ariel McDonald of St Gabriel Primary said of the day’s examination.
She said that she would be studying extra for Mathematics.
Meanwhile, other students shared that the exams went smoothly as studies paid off.
“It was good, I think I passed,” Johnte Asana of St Margaret’s Primary said.
“It was easy; I’m prepared for tomorrow, I studied,” Jeremiah Daley of St Agnes Primary said on Wednesday.
The NGSA will conclude today; students are scheduled to sit Mathematics Papers 1 and 2 in the morning and Social Studies Papers 1 and 2 during the afternoon.

Education Minister Priya Manickchand, during an update on Wednesday, said that she anticipated positive outcomes, given the resources and the many initiatives applied to prepare students for the major examination.
Manickchand visited the Bel Air Primary School, Georgetown ahead of the exams on Wednesday, and extended best wishes to the students there.
“We are very glad to be able to run off these exams, particularly because we made specific efforts to make these children ready,” the Minister is quoted by the Department of Public Information (DPI) as saying following her interaction with students.

She added, “We are very confident that we are not going to be seeing some of the results that some of our sister Caricom countries have been bawling about recently.”
Like the rest of the world, schools in Guyana were closed for two years owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. While virtual teaching became common during that period, in April this year, schools fully reopened for face-to-face learning.
The closure, Manickchand said, posed a number of challenges in terms of effectively delivering quality and equitable education to the nation’s children, particularly those in far-flung areas.
As a result, the Government implemented some very bold initiatives to ensure students were able to tackle the learning loss resulting from the prolonged school closure. These included the consolidation of the curriculum to enable students to catch up on work they missed out, and facilitate their re-entry into classrooms.

“We prepared work sheets, we taught on the television channel, we have a video prepared for every single topic. We have an entire website dedicated to quizzes that we prepared that are specific to these topics, and so there is little else that could be done by the Ministry to prepare these children,” the DPI further quoted the Minister as saying.
She said Government was committed to ensuring pupils receive a high-quality secondary education.
“Our commitment to you is that we are working hard to ensure all the schools deliver a very high-quality education, so, if you get Campbellville Secondary, you must be confident that in five years, you will be a student to whom value was significantly added, and who will be productive in society once they leave the school,” she declared.
The Education Minister also thanked teachers and parents for their dedication and hard work in preparing students for the examination.
Speaking with Guyana Times on Monday, Chief Education Officer, Dr Marcel Hutson had stated that 16,250 Grade Six students were expected to sit the NGSA.
Last year, the examination was postponed for nearly five months owing to the peaking of the COVID-19 pandemic and was written in August 2021.
Education Minister Manickchand had explained that the 2022 examination was prepared similarly to the 2021 examination, covering topics up to the Grade Five level based on the consolidated curriculum. (Amar Persaud)