EDUCATION MINISTER, Priya Manickchand, has said that the Mathematics and English pilot project which ran over a four-month period of January to May this year facilitated a significant increase in Grades One to Three passes in 18 of the schools in which it was implemented. Speaking of the results of this year’s Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) exams at a recent press conference, the minister noted that “even in the face of the dismal results we’ve gotten across the region (Caribbean), Guyana has reason to celebrate and may even have some lessons that we can share.”
Ms. Manickchand said that the overall pass rate in the pilot schools was 39.85% in Mathematics, and 52.05% in English Language. She noted that not only did these schools perform better than they did last year, but their pass rates in these two subjects were above the national and regional averages. Some of the schools which saw significant improvement were: West Demerara Secondary (from 62.6% in 2011 to 80.53% in 2012), Berbice high School (from 12.8% in 2011 to 51.56% in 2012) and Christ Church Secondary (from 36.4% in 2011 to 61.91% in 2012).
The minister noted that the pilot project was implemented in 36 schools from every administrative region in the country, and these schools were not the top schools, but were the schools which were performing poorly. According to her, the pilot schools had a total of a little over 7,000 students, and additional resources and enhanced supervision were given to them.
The Government of Guyana ensured that each child had the relevant text books, calculators, geometry sets, graph paper, and study guides, as well as extra lessons and classes. They also engaged the assistance of volunteers who aided in the supervision of how the programmes were working, such as ensuring that each syllabus was finished, and that extra classes were being held.
Ms. Manickchand said that during the course of the pilot project, she visited each of the schools on several occasions, and met with the students and their parents. She noted that while some of the pilot schools showed significant improvement, there were also some that did not do better, and some that even did worse. She attributed this to the fact that in some schools, there was a very small turn out of parents. The minister said that “everybody has to hold hands here to make sure our children do well.” She noted that in one of the schools which had a very small turn out of parents, the pass rate was only 2%.
The Education Minister said that private schools were also called in and told what was expected of them. According to her, the administrators for these schools were given past papers and told to photocopy them for distribution to the students.
Ms. Manickchand said that if there was so much improvement over such a short period of time that this project was carried out, then there’s great promise for even more improvement over a one-year period.
“The overall aim of the programme is to increase the number of candidates securing passes in Mathematics and English Language,” Ms. Manickchand reiterated.
Source: https://guyanachronicle.com/2012/08/14/mathematics-english-pilot-project-contributes-to-significant-increase-in-grades-one-to-three-csec-passes