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Only 14% of Grade Six students passed maths –Finance Minister

-less than half made the grade in English

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During the presentation of the 2017 Budget on Monday, Minister of Finance Winston Jordan revealed that of the 14,386 students who wrote the 2016 National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) only 14% or 2,014 students were able to achieve a passing grade in Mathematics and less than 50% achieved passes in English.

Jordan stressed that these results represent a crisis since “over 12,000 of our children were not numerate, while more than half of those writing English could not sufficiently comprehend our official language to attain a 50 percent score.”

This is first time the government has revealed the pass rate for these subject areas at the 2016 sitting of the examination.The last time the pass rate for Grade Six Mathematics was made public was in 2014 when 31.52% of the 15,227 candidates who sat the examinations that year achieved 50% or more in the subject area.

In October a release from the Ministry of Presidency while not referencing the pass rate had said that Cabinet examined the “unsatisfactory” results as a matter of “extreme urgency and grave national importance” and had called on the Ministry of Education and its technical advisors to identify all appropriate steps needed to remedy this situation.

In the release Cabinet noted that for many years Guyana has “consistently failed to achieve acceptable pass rates” and acknowledged that this year’s examination which was designed by the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) exposed “even more the weakness of the previous approach to education adopted by the Ministry of Education….” with its “increased focus on reasoning and decreased emphasis on retention.”

In response to these results Cabinet earlier this month approved the expenditure of $48.6 million for the implementation of a seven-point strategy labelled the “Emergency Education intervention for improved performance in Mathematics by students in Grade Six.”

The approved intervention which is expected to address critical issues in the teaching and learning of mathematics will target the preparation and administration of a diagnostic assessment of pupils in the hinterland region before training.

It will also address the training of teachers in content and methodology; the facilitating of fortnightly cluster meetings in all regions; the recruitment of math coordinators and monitors; the training of officers and school administrators to supervise the teaching of mathematics; the enhancement of public relations and parental involvement in the project and the acquisition of support material for the pupils as part of the project.

Though the ministry has already begun executing this programme Jordan stressed on Monday that the government has to ensure they “properly diagnose problems and apply solutions that seek to structurally change the mode, scale, and regional appropriateness of interventions.”

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ba$eman posted:

Kids need to buckle down and pull up their sox!!

Possibility could be lacking of good Math teachers.

Well they can get some help from "Khans Academy" on line.

In my time of schooling we had a few Top class math teachers,we had some thick and heavy maths book that was used from "CP" up to "O" Level,I man used to study the maths subject in advance,at that time maths was three subjects.

Django
Last edited by Django
Drugb posted:

Looks like the PNC fail to retain the good teachers or the students and parents just don't care as all hope is now gone for a future in Guyana. 

The kids who took these exams received most of their education under the PPP.

So indict the PPP or reveal yourself to be a fraud.

The results are worse because the exam was more rigorous.

FM
Last edited by Former Member
ba$eman posted:

Kids need to buckle down and pull up their sox!!

Shut your behind. It is poor delivery of information on mathematics by teachers. Grade six math is what you can teach your kids in a week.

FM
Django posted:
ba$eman posted:

Kids need to buckle down and pull up their sox!!

Possibility could be lacking of good Math teachers.

Well they can get some help from "Khans Academy" on line.

In my time of schooling we had a few Top class math teachers,we had some thick and heavy maths book that was used from "CP" up to "O" Level,I man used to study the maths subject in advance,at that time maths was three subjects.

For CP we used a couple of books by Hardy ( a pure mathematician who with littlewood was a mentor to Srinivasa Ramanujan). The book was ( as i look back in retrospect) rules based so you miss out on the history of the problems being addressed. You had to cram dozens of theorems. In college, I got into trouble for not being in the habit of detailing the arguments step by step but because of the rules  one can jump over large sections to the argument to the conclusion. American professors of math at undergraduate levels do not like that.   In higher mathematics the rules come in to play but you can only know them and recognize them if you actually had experience in detailing how they function

FM
Last edited by Former Member

CP was a useless exam and a waste of money. I did not take it. Lots of students in my time got distinctions in many subjects. Some went on to fail GCE completely..not even passing Religious Knowledge.

FM
skeldon_man posted:

CP was a useless exam and a waste of money. I did not take it. Lots of students in my time got distinctions in many subjects. Some went on to fail GCE completely..not even passing Religious Knowledge.

As I remember it it took me to third form high school where I only had to go two years for gce and that give me a head start of 3 years on my high school friends ( skipped one year in primary school) and I was the only one with 10 gce and only one of 3 that got above five at our school the year I left do do A levels.  I  had 7 subjects at CP. As I remember it, some people taught primary school with CP so it could not be all that bad.

FM
Last edited by Former Member
ba$eman posted:

Kids need to buckle down and pull up their sox!!

The PPP chased out all the good teachers to Jamaica, Barbados and the other small islands in the Carribean. In the Bahamas, I happen to have met 3 Guyanese family at a beach who were residents there. They were all teachers. What we are seeing here is the result of years of negligence by the PPP.

Mitwah
Danyael posted:
skeldon_man posted:

CP was a useless exam and a waste of money. I did not take it. Lots of students in my time got distinctions in many subjects. Some went on to fail GCE completely..not even passing Religious Knowledge.

As I remember it it took me to third form high school where I only had to go two years for gce and that give me a head start of 3 years on my high school friends ( skipped one year in primary school) and I was the only one with 10 gce and only one of 3 that got above five at our school the year I left do do A levels.  I  had 7 subjects at CP. As I remember it, some people taught primary school with CP so it could not be all that bad.

I got 6 subjects at CP missed distinction in Algebra by one mark, [only afforded to pay for 7 subjects].

I was 15 yrs old could have been a primary school teacher,i said to myself too young didn't not apply.

Django

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