Jamaica is on course to meet the National Minimum Proficiency Target of 85 per cent in the Primary Exit Profile (PEP) by 2030.

Minister of Education, Skills, Youth and Information, Senator Dr Dana Morris Dixon, made the disclosure during Friday’s PEP Press Conference at the Ministry’s Heroes’ Circle offices in Kingston.

In the 2025 sitting of PEP, 63 and 69 per cent of students were deemed proficient or highly proficient in Mathematics and Language Arts, respectively.

For Science and Social Studies, 70 and 72 per cent of students, respectively, scored in the proficient or highly proficient categories.

Among the four subjects, Mathematics had the highest percentage of students at the developing level at 34 per cent, followed by Science at 28 per cent.

However, Dr Morris Dixon reasoned that the Ministry’s mathematics interventions are paying off. “In grade four, 25.5 per cent of them were at the beginning stage, meaning they were very basic in Maths. But if we look by grade six this year, only three per cent of them were seen to be at the beginning level. That’s a big, big deal,” she said.

Additionally, in grade four, only 27 per cent of students were classified as proficient and by grade six, that number more than doubled to 56 per cent.

“Those are some encouraging numbers. Are they where we want to be? No. We have more work to do….  We’re seeing progress being made, which means that what we’re doing is right. We just need to intensify it,” Dr Morris Dixon said.

Turning to Language Arts, she shared that almost 34 per cent of students in grade four were deemed to be at the beginning stage and 27.4 per cent were at the developing stage.

“Only 34 per cent were proficient in grade four. But by grade five, 56.6 per cent of our students were now proficient and it didn’t stop. Our teachers didn’t stop. They continued working with the students and by grade six, 67 per cent of our students were at the proficient level,” the minister said.

PEP comprises several assessments derived from grades four, five and six. The Grade 4 Performance Tasks were administered in June 2023, while students sat the Grade 5 Performance Tasks in June 2024.

Grade 6 has three components—Ability Test, Performance Tasks and Curriculum-based Tests—which were administered in February, March and April 2025, respectively.