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Tanisha Ford-Farquharson, Principal of Salem Primary and Junior High in Westmoreland, responding to Morning Agenda host Jodi-Ann Quarrie; and Owen Speid, Principal of Rousseau Primary School in St. Andrew
At least two primary school principals are in support of the decision to postpone all remaining national assessments at the primary school level.
The Ministry of Education on Monday announced that the tests have been pushed back until the latter half of the Christmas term of the 2021/2022 academic year.
The tests include the Primary Exit Profile Grade 4 and Grade 5 assessments.
The ministry said the decision was made after consultations with key stakeholders.
Tanisha Ford-Farquharson, Principal of Salem Primary and Junior High in Westmoreland, says many of the students were not prepared for the tests.
Mrs Ford Farquharson says with face-to-face classes for Grades 4 and 5 resuming on Monday, teachers will use the next few weeks left in the academic year, to get the students ready.
She acknowledged that while it is possible students may regress because of the limited face-to-face time and the summer break to follow, schools will have to put in place mitigating plans for the holiday period and students "will have to put themselves in the position to kind of get into the groove for the exam."
Owen Speid, Principal of Rousseau Primary School in St. Andrew, said he is "happy" the grades 4 and 5 exams were postponed but thought the better option would have been to cancel the tests.
He said the ministry's postponement of the PEP tests while at the same time instructing students to attend physical classes, is puzzling as the classes might not be of much help to the students due to insufficient time left in the school year.
"We are still uncertain as to what the COVID will do, so I would say give them more time, give the teachers enough time to teach them properly. Hopefully, we can get some return to normalcy at September and we have enough time in those months to really teach them, to bring back some of those who were really out of the loop from 2020," he resolved.
But Mr. Speid, who is a member of the PEP oversight committee, is foreseeing difficulties assessing those students matriculating to Grade 6 in the new academic year because of the postponement of the grade 5 exams.
"These grade 5 [students] are going to go on to grade 6 and I think the grade 6 teachers should now be allowed to teach their curriculum and they get the test at their grade level at that time because this gonna be mass confusion if you have the ministry sending a grade 5 level test when the grade 6 teachers have the curriculum to deal with," he suggested.
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