The Ministry of Education, Youth and Information has made changes to next year’s sitting of the Primary Exit Profile (PEP), to take account of the interruption in students’ studies due to the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Speaking during Tuesday’s (December 8) sitting of the House of Representatives, Education Minister Fayval Williams said the Performance Task and the Curriculum-Based Test have been delayed until later in the year.
In addition, the content coverage on which students will be assessed has been reduced.
“These students’ profiles will comprise grade-four PEP done in 2019 and the grade-six components to be done in 2021. The ministry will advise on the weighting to be applied after a comprehensive study to be done by the consulting psychometrician on the students’ actual data.”
Fayval Williams, minister of education, youth and Information
Williams said for academic year 2020-2021, the ministry intends to administer PEP at grade six using the usual approach guided by the COVID-19 protocols.
“These students’ profiles will comprise grade-four PEP done in 2019 and the grade-six components to be done in 2021. The ministry will advise on the weighting to be applied after a comprehensive study to be done by the consulting psychometrician on the students’ actual data,” she told the House.
She noted that the first component to be tested at grade six is the Ability Test which will be administered Tuesday, February 23, 2021.
It will measure students’ ability to reason with words and quantities and will consist of 40 single select multiple-choice items.
The scores for the Performance Tasks for Language Arts and Mathematics will be combined with the scores the students receive in the respective Curriculum-based Tests to give an overall score of the students’ achievement of the learning goals of the National Standards Curriculum (NSC) for the different subjects.
The dates for the Performance Tasks for grade-six students are as follows: Language Arts Performance Task Thursday, April 22, 2021; and Friday, April 23, 2021 for the Mathematics Performance Task.
For the Curriculum-based Test, the dates for grade-six students are Tuesday, May 25, 2021 – Language Arts and Science; and Wednesday, May 26, 2021 for Mathematics and Social Studies.
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