Education Ministry to Make Interventions to Improve Literacy

As the Ministry of Education targets 100 per cent literacy, a number of interventions will be made at the primary level, including a screening programme for children entering Grade 1, to ensure early detection and treatment for those with special needs.
“Full literacy rate, that’s our target, 100 per cent, (so) the 10 per cent of persons, who require special support, they might be having mental retardation, they may be having visual impairment problems. Whatever it is, we need to screen, identify and support,” said Senior Director in the Human Resource Modernisation Division of the Ministry, Ruth Morris.
“It makes no sense for you to have someone who has a slight mental retardation problem and battering that person through a system that is not catering to that person. It is immoral,” she stated.
Mrs. Morris was speaking to education stakeholders in region six at a public forum held at the Versalles Hotel in Clarendon recently, to inform them about the Competence-based Transition Policy, which will be introduced this June.
Under the new policy, pupils must achieve mastery of the Grade Four Literacy Test, before they are allowed to sit the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT). “No child will move automatically from the primary level to the secondary level unless that child is certified literate,” Mrs. Morris pointed out.
Starting this year, the sitting of the Grade Four Test will be moved from May to June, and it will be administered under strict examination conditions similar to GSAT.
“So, we will now have a registration of children for the exam. We will now have invigilators, presiding officers, scripts will be opened in front of the children, scripts will be collected, sealed, marked externally and the results will be sent back to the schools in two forms – a master copy for the school, and individual statements,” Mrs. Morris outlined.
Each child, who has achieved mastery of the literacy test, will receive a certificate, which will qualify them to sit the GSAT in 2011. Those who have not mastered the Grade Four Test will have three additional opportunities to do so, prior to sitting GSAT in Grade 6.
According to Mrs. Morris, the move to introduce the policy has become necessary, as the system is burdened with too many students, who have not achieved a satisfactory level of literacy.
Statistics from the National Assessment Programme (NAP) indicate that 12,250 students, or approximately 29 per cent of persons assessed by the Grade Four Literacy Test in 2007, did not achieve the required literacy level. For the same period, 16 per cent of GSAT entrants had not attained the minimum level of literacy.