THE Ministry of Education is expecting at least 80 per cent of the 1,341 students enrolled in its special summer numeracy and literacy programme, for those who did not attain mastery scores in their Primary Exit Profile (PEP) examinations, to meet that benchmark before they enter high school in September. After PEP results were released in June, the education ministry reported that of the 31,677 students who sat the exam, 75 per cent achieved mastery in numeracy assessments, while 79 per cent demonstrated mastery in literacy. At the time, portfolio minister Senator Dr Dana Morris Dixon indicated that those students who performed at near mastery and non-mastery levels would be sought out by the ministry to ensure that no child is left behind.
On Tuesday, permanent secretary in the ministry Dr Kasan Troupe told the Jamaica Observer that those students are now being engaged in an intense three-week, Government-funded, summer programme that runs until the end of July and which will target their weak areas and reassess their level of competence upon its completion. “Right now, as indicated by our minister, the plan is for us to have a majority of our students, if not all, go to high school literate. As you know, we have been working on that as an education system,” said Troupe at the handover ceremony of CIBC Caribbean prepaid cards to nine principals affected by last October’s Hurricane Melissa, at the bank’s corporate office in New Kingston.
“We saw a 10 per cent improvement in the level of mastery for literacy this year. The same students who we assessed this year, when they got their mastery scores in grade four it was 69 per cent, and this year it is 79 per cent, and we identified some students who are on the cusp. If it was a little bit more we would have got them there.
So, the thrust now is to run them through an intensive literacy and numeracy initiative,” said Troupe. The permanent secretary explained that the first week of the programme was used to conduct assessments that identified where students were on their journey of becoming numerate and literate. She noted that the information garnered from those tests was then used to form their learning plan for the next two weeks.
While acknowledging that attempting to achieve mastery in three weeks would be a challenge, she argued that the ministry is well equipped to provide students with the material nee… A special education teacher at a middle school in Virginia is accused of assaulting one of his students.
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