Dear Editor,
The Ministry of Education has been gallivanting around the country holding diagnostic tests and post mortems to determine the reason for the poor performance in Mathematics in our primary schools, especially at the last national Grade 6 Assessments.
The tragedy in all this is that at the end of it all the results in Mathematics will in no way be improved. It anything does happen, they will only get worse. The officials at the ministry are looking everywhere else for answers except within the ministry itself.
I have had a look at the Mathematics paper set for the 2016 examination and recoiled in horror at what I saw. My thirty years’ experience in the classroom immediately informed me that the exam by its very nature was designed to fail our students from the outset. Why then the big hue and cry?
Masquerading around the country looking for answers is a clear indication that those responsible have not a clue of what they are about.
A clear indication of the trauma faced by students writing the last examination can be easily found by administering the very exam to four categories of students at each of the five levels of secondary school in Guyana: low, average, good and excellent performers. To make the results more reliable and valid, students should be chosen from our top schools, our schools with average performances and our schools with not so good performance at the CSEC examinations.
I guarantee that after doing such an assessment the current charade will be halted and the money be made available to be put to much better use, if they know how.
Yours faithfully,
Deon Abrams
