Govt. looking at new dates for “Common Entrance”

Dec 07, 2015 News

Minister of Education Dr Rupert Roopnarine has revealed that the National Grade Six Assessment will not be held at its customary date at the end of the Easter School Term.
The revelation was made during an interview with this newspaper and it comes two weeks after the Ministry of Education sent out a circular to schools across Guyana informing them that parts of the National Grade Six Assessment will be discarded with regard to its grading system.
The Minister stated that the move to change the dates of the examination was precipitated by the various national holidays around that time and also a need to provide students with more time to prepare. “We are very much in favour of there being sufficient time to prepare for examinations. I think they need more time to prepare and we will try to fix the dates to permit them more breathing space.”

Minister of Education, Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine

Currently, the Ministry is involved in discussions regarding the pushing back of the dates so that there will be no conflict between examinations and national holidays.
While no dates have been selected as yet, some dates have been proposed for consideration in late April and early May. This, Roopnaraine related however, is just one possibility as they do not want to go into conflict with CSEC examinations.
Regarding the NGSA grading scheme, Roopnaraine since his appointment as Minister of Education, had stated the need for parts of the National Grade Six Examination to be discarded as it was fostering unhealthy, “exam culture” in the nation’s children. He made good on this promise late last week. As such, the next National Grade Six Assessments are going to be assessments which will not have 15% percent from grades 2 and 4 examinations,” he said.
Schools were urged to put the necessary systems in place for the results of these assessments to be the basis for strategic interventions aimed at overcoming identified weaknesses of pupils.