The Ministry of Education has commended primary school principals and teachers for their efforts in preparing the nation’s children for the Grade Four Literacy and Numeracy Tests to be held on June 30 and July 1, 2015 respectively. A total of 116,250 candidates will sit the examination.
In a recent bulletin to schools Chief Education Officer Dr Grace McLean advised principals of all Primary Schools that the format of the Grade Four Numeracy and Literacy Tests remains the same as previous sittings.
The Literacy Test will constitute three sections. Section One is Word Recognition and is marked out of a total of 40 marks. Section Two is Reading Comprehension and is marked out of a total of 30 marks and Section Three is the Writing Task, which has tasks one and two. This section of the examination is marked out of a total of 8 marks.
The Numeracy Test has two papers. Paper one consists of 46 multiple choice items and students are given one hour and 10 minutes to complete this paper. Paper two consists of three open-ended questions and students are given 20 minutes to complete these items.
The Chief Education Officer further advised principals and teachers to ensure that in the midst of all other activities scheduled for the month of June adequate time is spent giving students the opportunity to master the relevant concepts.
She said on the mornings of both the Literacy and Numeracy examinations parents must ensure that their children are provided with a warm and fulsome breakfast. All students should get sufficient rest the nights before both examinations.
The upcoming sitting of the Grade Four Literacy Test, in particular, takes on added significance because this is the target year for 85 per cent of the grade-four age cohort to master literacy, which was set as a Millennium Development Goal.
Last year the country achieved 77.4 per cent mastery of literacy and 58 per cent in numeracy. While the numeracy target date has been pushed back to 2018, schools are pulling out all stops in an attempt to narrow the 7.6 percentage gap in the literacy mastery level.