Earlier this week we told you the 2012 results of Primary School Examinations. The grades have improved across-the-board, but to shed some light on whether this is a trend or what the statisticians call an outlier, we spoke to the woman who designs the exam, Yvonne Davis of the Examinations Unit.
She told us that this year's record breaking PSE results are a little bit of both.
Yvonne Davis - P.S.E. Examiner
"This year, the overall performance is at the C level, and I think that this is almost a record for us because this is saying that most students earned a C overall on the exam. We have seen almost a steady flow of incremental increase in English and Math. And those seemed - to me - to be the more steady subjects. But in Social Studies and Science, over the years, we've had a few spikes. This year, we have a huge spike in Science at 74.4%. This is the highest that we have ever achieved in any of the subjects. This is the first year that we have had performance at the B level in any of the subjects, and this is shown in the Science scores this year. So I am pretty sure that the children were very well-prepared this year for the Science exam. That may have been one of the major contributors to the spike that we see this year. We would like to see that in all of the other subject areas as well. There is evidence of text writing still. I remember the supervisors coming to me to say they're still getting a number of text language influencing the writing. What we need to say to the teachers and the students as they prepare for the national exam, these incomplete spelling of words, this counts against them in terms of how their papers are marked. If everybody is now abbreviating all of these sight words, we wouldn't know for sure whether they know to spell them correctly or to use them in the proper context. This year, we have had a few of the violent themes - not as many as we have seen in some recent years - but I know that some of these scripts were brought to me indicating violent themes. We have a number of very sad stories, students talking about their loneliness. I've seen one, but there is no - nothing stands out."
Carol Babb - Deputty Chief Education Officer
"I believe that the exam scores are up because of some of the interventions that we've put in place. We've been invested a lot - and I must emphasize - a lot in teacher training. Over the past 3 years, teachers who had an associate's degree in language arts, or in something other than teacher training, we were offering them a certified education program. We're taking a different approach to the way how we teach Math and Science. If you will recall - I don't know how your teacher taught you Science or Math, but a lot of things were taught in abstract. And so, we're doing a more hands-on approach. It will take a couple years for us to see marked improvement. And of course, education is everyone's business. It's not only the Ministry of Education's business."
Both women stressed that, although the ministry is trying to increase the quality of education in the country, the parents, teachers, and management must also do their part.
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