The National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) will be written in July, after being postponed from April due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Caretaker Education Minister, Nicolette Henry made this announcement on Tuesday, as reported by the Department of Public Information (DPI).
According to Henry, this will grant candidates enough time to be prepared for the examination – a benchmark set to allocate students to the secondary education programme.
“The technical officers are working on that… they’re planning to roll it out and to get the students to write that examination [soon],” Henry was quoted as saying.
After the timeline is finalised, it would have to be approved by the National COVID-19 Task Force and the Public Health Ministry.
With this being said, schools will not be reopened before June 3, owing to the imminent threat brought on by the coronavirus. The NGSA was originally set for April 8 and 9, covering four subject areas namely English, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies.
After the closure of schools in March, parents were encouraged to continue working with their children in preparation for the examination, as well as students in other grades, by working practice test papers and tuning into educational programmes.
Before taking a decision to shut down these schools, the Ministry had initially advised persons to take the necessary precautions as advised by the World Health Organisation (WHO); Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in relation to COVID-19 but later recanted their decision of keeping these institutions open amid the threats.
In March, the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) had also proposed a July 2020 timeline for the sitting of the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE). Registrar of the Council, Dr Wayne Wesley had stated during a virtual press conference that the Council formulated a revised strategy for the May-June examinations, making the health and wellbeing of involved stakeholders the priority.
As such, they planned to administer one common paper; that is, the multiple-choice, along with School-Based Assessments (SBAs) to determine the final grade. For modern languages, Human and Social Biology and Visual Arts, other modalities would be followed.
The decision to relocate the examination to another time circulated around the increasingly worrying circumstances brought about by the novel coronavirus, COVID-19.
