JTA president wants a clearer PEP scoring system

Western Bureau:

While applauding the Government’s handling of this year’s Primary Exit Profile (PEP) examinations, with 80 per cent of students getting into their schools of choice, Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) President Owen Speid says that a clearer explanation of the examination’s scoring system must be provided.

Speid made the call on Monday while answering questions during a Zoom online conference held by the JTA’s St James parish association. The forum was held to elect officers to serve the JTA at the parish level during the 2020-21 administrative year.

“The JTA is pretty satisfied that the Government did what it could do to come up with the scores for the PEP exams. Our only challenge, as we have been saying for some time, is that the scores themselves are not easily understood by the vast majority of persons, and people should be taken to do short courses to understand how they compute these scores,” said Speid.

The JTA president added that using a percentage scoring system, similar to what was used in the Grade Six Achievement Test before the institution of PEP, would allow for an easier gauging of students’ performance. He noted that a similar suggestion was made last year when the PEP exams were first launched.

“When the children get scores of 250 or 340, you are not sure how they arrived at that, and I believe it should be explained. Indeed, maybe the percentage scores would have been better, as we said last year, because it would be easier for teachers, students, and parents to understand if you put the percentage there,” noted Speid.

This year’s sitting of the PEP exams was amid the global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in schools being ordered closed on March 13 and a new system of virtual learning being put in place. Schools are expected to reopen in September.

On June 24, the Ministry of Education opened an online portal where parents could register to see their children’s PEP results. However, parents subsequently complained of difficulties with the registration process, prior to the results being made available at primary schools on June 26.

Speid also acknowledged that despite the high number of students being placed in their chosen schools, some students, parents, and teachers might still be dissatisfied with the exams’ overall placement mechanism.

“No matter what you do, there are going to be parents, students, and even teachers who are not satisfied with the placements. But we want to encourage people and say to them that they need to work hard; and some of the students might have thrown away their chances to get their preferred schools by not putting out the effort in the early stages of their school life,” said Speid.