Poor test scores examined by ministry
On Wednesday when the results of the Primary School Exam were made public, more than a few people were surprised at what appeared to be some disappointingly low grades. According to officials from the Ministry of Education, of the 5,221 students who sat the exam, less than half managed to score even 50%. While the Ministry of Education says the PSE cannot be compared to its predecessor, the BNSE, it does admit that this year’s results don’t paint a pretty picture of primary school education in Belize.
Maud Hyde, Principal Education Officer, Min. of Education
“I think we need to go further than the results though, we need to look at the purpose of the examination. I think somehow we’re attempting to compare the PSE with the BNSE and saying that, there’s a huge difference. We need to remember that the exams focused on 2 different purposes. In the case of the BNSE, we were interested in ranking the students using the percentile score to measure their performance against each other. In the case of the PSE now, it’s quite different. The purpose of the exam is to reflect achievement. We’re interested in finding out what our children has mastered, covered at the end of standard six in the 3 areas tested.”
“As I said for many of them and for us too, we would have liked to see them perform much better in the examination. But for them, it would give them an indication when they move on to secondary where they’re at, where they need to start from. So from that perspective, we hope that it will give, particularly the secondary schools now, a chance to put the remedial programs in place to meet the needs of children who really have not performed very well.”
“What has happened over the years, we’ve been noting a certain level of deficiency in the system and I think that is evident in our efforts of curriculum reform. We know there are certain things that we would like to put in place or would like to see improve. And therefore we need to put the measures in place. The PSE simply gives us evidence to say well, there’s something we need to address and in fact, there are many things. I hope that seeing the results of the examination, now we can say well, this is where we start from, and we would like to achieve so much and work towards that.”
According to Hyde, those students who scored below the 50% mark will still be considered for admission high school. This is the first year that the PSE has replaced the Belize National Selection Examination or BNSE. The PSE tested students in the subjects of mathematics, science and English language.
