The Ghana Education Service has scheduled Friday, December 17 for the maiden national standardized test for class 4 pupils across the country.
According to the Minister of Education, Dr. Yaw Osei-Adutwum, the one-day exams for the pupils is designed to generate requisite data for any needful intervention.
The National Standardized Test does not only seek to improve learning outcomes but also reduce learning poverty across the country.
A Facebook post by the GES indicates that a total of 561,595 pupils in primary 4 from 15,911 public schools have been registered to write the exams in 2,609 examination centers with 200 pupils per center.
Candidates will be tested on proficiency in English and mathematics.
Dr. Osei-Adutwum said a periodic national exam on primary students will give the Ghana Education Service ample time to intervene in the lives of the children.
“The first time we get national data on individual students is when they take the BECE. That is eleven years after they begin their education journey. At that point, it is too late to intervene. Whatever they did or did not do is done they have to move on to SHS”
He notes that there has been a call to action that “we streamline our assessment process and also ensure that we have critical data that will help us do the intervention.”
He however dismissed the assertion that pupils are performing poorly because schools have not been resourced.
According to him, there were learner packages that were put together at the time of implementation of the curriculum, and as such teachers had something to use in teaching and learning.
He added that “in spite of that if we were to even assume that they did not have the full complement of textbooks, this is the reason why we even need to do this assessment so that we can identify the deficiency and solve the problem.”
On his part, the Director-General of the Ghana Education Service, Prof. Kwasi Opoku Amankwa said the National Standardized Test has been designed to aid in grading pupils.
He notes that the grading “will not come in the form of first, second, third, etc but will come to let us know the areas where we need to improve on…”
According to him, the results of the exams will be released early next year adding that the national standardized test will be administered annually.
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Meanwhile, GES said due to the new examination date for the National Standardized Test, all Basic Schools will vacate on the 17th of December, 2021 adding that it will make up for the lost vacation period in the next academic calendar.
Source: Anthony Sasu Ayisadu/ATLFMNEWS
