I am flabbergasted at the cavalier manner in which the Ministry of Education has gone about dismantling the secondary school placement system, of which the National Grade Six Assessment is but one element. So far as I am aware, outside of some contention about the examinations being too burdensome for parents, the ministry has not provided any rationale for its decision to go back to a system that was being criticised for decades before it was changed.
I have stayed away from involvement because although the idea of reforming the extant system had been in the pipeline years before, the reform was actually done under my watch as Minister of Education and I did not want imported
