Ministry making a mockery
... What the ministry actually administered in June 2018 as a mock assessment was, in fact, a pilot assessment. There is no need to administer a pilot assessment to the entire cohort or population, as in this case.
Michael-Anthony Dobson-Lewis/ Guest Columnist
THE ROBUST conversations surrounding the implementation of the Primary Exit Profile (PEP) continue, and rightly so.
There are gaps in utterances and errors made even from the Ministry of Education, which has overall responsibility for curriculum (National Standard Curriculum (NSC)) and the assessment.
I want to make it abundantly clear that in the fields of curriculum and assessment, one has to be very clear and precise how terminologies are used.
The Ministry of Education administered what it called a mock exam in June 2018. The ministry has reported that the results are now being analysed in order to make decisions as it relate to the preparation of the real assessment to be administered in 2019.
Here we go again! If this is the purpose of the mock exam, the ministry does not know exactly what is a mock assessment. A mock assessment is an equivalent form, a parallel form, of the real assessment. The items/questions on the mock exam would be similar, of the same depth, and assessing the same outcomes/objectives based on the curriculum.
The truth, therefore, is that what the ministry actually administered in June 2018 as a mock assessment was, in fact, a pilot assessment. There is no need to administer a pilot assessment to the entire cohort or population, as in this case. The ministry needs to stop this activity and administer no more such assessments.
It should select a representative sample from the cohort, from all six educational regions, and administer the pilot assessments, and conduct the item analyses to determine the difficulty and discrimination indices of each item/question. These indices will tell how difficult or easy each item was and also, how well each item discriminates between those who obtained high scores and those who obtained low scores.
A good assessment should not be too easy and not too difficult. It should discriminate well between those who obtain high scores and those who obtain low scores. These results/indices are then used to proceed in the preparation of the real assessment.
SCHOOLS SHOULD GIVE OWN MOCK TESTS
It is the individual primary schools who should administer their own mock assessment. Now that there has been additional training of teachers at camps and workshops and the distribution of sample items, and since the teachers are the ones implementing the curriculum, they should now be able to write items based on the curriculum for their mock assessment. I know that this has been happening in some schools, but it is the way forward for all schools.
I am recommending that there be a deliberate effort now to have a dedicated team of trainers based at all six educational regions to see to the effective implementation and monitoring of the curriculum and assessment process. This can be done, as there was a similar situation with the implementation of the Reform of Secondary Education Curriculum in the 1990s. These trainers would be right there in the fields, on spot, visiting and observing the teachers in action and providing the well-needed support.
I am also recommending that there be a rethinking as to how we go about training our primary-school teachers. Research has shown that the single most important factor in the teachinglearning process is teacher quality. In this regard, I am again recommending specialised teaching at the primary level in the following subject areas: mathematics, science, social studies and language arts.
Another recommendation is that a full module called ‘critical thinking’ be mandatory for all teachers in training, and there should be mechanisms put in place for in-service teachers to take this module.
We have been having these conversations, but it is now time to act. I know there is limited funding to do so many important interventions in our country, Jamaica, at this time, but it can be done and should be done for the good of our children who are the future, or else it is going to cost us much in crime in the future.
There is great danger in delaying action on these recommendations!