Dr. Grace McLean, Permanent Secretary in the Education Ministry - file photo
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Dr. Grace McLean and PAAC member Lisa Hanna
The Ministry of Education is set to embark on an urgent intervention programme in the wake of diagnostic tests which revealed students are significantly behind in key subject areas after missing months of classes.
The diagnostic tests were designed to assess learning loss which students may have experienced due to the disruption of classes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Average scores for students from grade four to six were way below 50 per cent across all subject areas on which they were tested.
The ministry said analysis has not been completed for students at the secondary school level.
During Wednesday's sitting of parliament's Public Administration and Appropriations Committee (PAAC), the ministry said there were significant gaps in students' understanding of critical concepts.
Dr. Grace McLean, Permanent Secretary in the Education Ministry (acting), revealed that students at the Grade Six level performed the worst in the diagnostic tests.
She noted that they averaged 30 per cent and below.
"For the four subjects that we actually did at Grade Six - Mathematics, Language Arts, Social Studies and Science - we have found that there is a mean score of 23 for Mathematics, 30 for Language Arts, 26 for Social Studies and 24 for Science," she revealed.
At Grade Five, she reported slightly better scores for the areas, with Mathematics is at 25, Language Arts at 33, Social Studies 31, and Science 28.
For Grade Four, Mathematics is at 37, Language Arts at 43 and Integrated Studies at 25 per cent.
The Education Ministry is proposing to spend $173.4 million on a remedial intervention programme.
It said the programme will need an estimated 60 Teacher Assistants for Literacy and Mathematics.
Dr. McLean said the programme will target students within their communities with face-to-face small group classes.
"We intend to commence this intervention in December as we seek to try and see how best we can, following the COVID protocols... start intervening in ensuring that we can bring up our students so the required level," she said.
But PAAC member Lisa Hanna questioned what would be done differently under the new remedial programme, given the failure of past initiatives.
"How are we going to rectify that against a background that already exists in education where when the students get to high school, even pre-COVID, they were not performing in some instances, and we still could not... find the remedies at that point to satisfy those things?" she asked.
Dr. Mclean acknowledged the challenges before COVID-19.
"I take the point that education within its entirety is an area that we have to continuously work on to see how we can improve the performance of our students. Of course, there are many variables that impact their performance, and I can assure you that we have analysed the data in great detail and we are working towards putting the interventions in place," she explained.
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