The Ministry of Education and Youth is advising that the administration of the Grade 3 Diagnostic Test is scheduled for next Wednesday (June 1) to Friday (June 17).

In a release, the ministry noted that students will be assessed in Language Arts and Mathematics and that both tests will be administered online using Google Forms, except for the Writing Task, which will be administered using paper and pencil.

“Hard copies of the Writing Task component of the Grade 3 Diagnostic Test will be dispatched to all regional offices on May 30, 2022,” the ministry said.

“Teachers are asked to administer the Writing Task in the same way it was administered in previous years. The Test Administration Manual has already been packaged and sent to all schools.”

LINK TO BE EMAILED TO SCHOOLS

A link for each diagnostic test (Language Arts and Mathematics) will be emailed to schools for the online administration.

“School administrators are being asked to ensure that all the tests are administered during the period June 1, 2022, to June 17, 2022 and should be done over a two-day period,” the ministry said.

The Language Arts Test and the Writing Task should be done on the first day of administration, and Mathematics should be administered on the second day. The Grade 3 Diagnostic Test is a whole class administration exercise and teachers are asked to follow the Administration Manual for guidelines.

For students without electronic devices, pdf versions of the tests will be made available to schools so that the necessary arrangements can be made for the tests to be downloaded and hard copies used to administer to students according to the schedule.

Said the ministry: “It must be noted, however, that school administrators are to ensure that the responses of students who complete hard copies of the test are uploaded on the Google Platform.

“At the end of the administration period, the Ministry’s Student Assessment Unit will process the results for each student and return the data to the respective schools, so that intervention plans and strategies can be developed to help students get back on their learning track or to progress accordingly. The links for the assessments will be sent on Tuesday, May 31, 2022, to each region.”

The Grade 3 Diagnostic Test is designed primarily to identify the areas of weakness that students may have at this point in their learning journey. The results of the test are to be used by grade-three teachers to adjust their teaching strategies in preparation for the incoming students while grade-four teachers should use them to plan necessary interventions for individual students and/or group of students who sat the tests.