2026 PEP to Include Literacy and Numeracy Exams

Starting in 2026, grade-six students will undertake literacy and numeracy assessments as part of the Primary Exit Profile (PEP).

This was announced by Minister of Education, Skills, Youth and Information, Senator Dr. the Hon. Dana Morris Dixon, during Friday’s (June 20) PEP Press Conference at the Ministry’s National Heroes’ Circle offices in Kingston.

She explained that the Grade Six PEP is not a direct test of literacy, as it currently assesses students’ mastery of the language arts curriculum.

“What we are planning to do, and we’re working through the final details of it, is to add some questions to the Mathematics and the Language Arts papers for Grade Six to test numeracy and literacy so that, next year, we’ll be able to give you data on the percentage considered literate,” Dr. Morris Dixon explained.

PEP ranks students in four categories of achievement: Beginning – limited or no competence, Developing – partial competence, Proficient – adequate competence, and Highly Proficient – advanced competence.

“Some of them in the developing category… it’s not that they’re not literate. We need to be able to tease that out and to be able to give Jamaica data that they can use,” Senator Morris Dixon indicated.

The 2025 administration of the Grade Six PEP marks the second year, since its inception in 2019, that a cohort of students transitioning from the primary level to the secondary level have a complete profile.

This constitutes all the scores and achievement levels obtained from the Grade Four Performance Tasks, which include literacy and numeracy tests; the Grade Five Performance Tasks and Grade Six components comprising the Ability Test, Performance Tasks and Curriculum-based Tests.