Letter of the Day | Preserve the best of PEP

THE EDITOR, Madam:

The Ministry of Education has announced that the Grade 6 Primary Exit Profile (PEP) examination will again be administered in a modified format. While this decision must be praised for its sensitivity and responsiveness to the challenges that have plagued this cohort, the inclusion of the Mathematics and Language Arts Performance Tasks should be reinstated for future Grade 6 PEP examinations.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced today’s Grade 6 students online at the time their educational foundation was being laid. Issues surrounding access to technology, uneven parental support, and uncertainty about how best to teach these young learners virtually affected them disproportionately. To compound matters, students in western parishes lost a significant amount of instructional time in Grade 5 because of the upheaval ushered in by Hurricane Melissa, from which many schools are still reeling. The Ministry of Education’s position to continue with the modified format is therefore just.

Yet, even as we try to be fair to the current cohort, the prolonged exclusion of Performance Task examinations in Mathematics and Language Arts at Grade 6 should not be normalised. The truth is that multiple-choice questions favour recall, and students who do not fully understand the content can still make a lucky guess. However, in an era increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, the Performance Task examination, which requires students to evaluate information, explain their understanding in extended responses, and apply their learning to scenario-based questions, is more relevant than it has ever been.

It must be acknowledged that the curriculum has not changed at its core. Teachers must continue to develop students’ ability to evaluate, analyse and synthesise information. At the same time, what is assessed is what is prioritised. If the Performance Task continues to be excluded, emphasis will inevitably shift from strengthening higher-order thinking to drilling strategies to pass multiple-choice-based tests. In essence, it will be a reversion to the previous method of assessment that we have already determined neither serves our students’ best interests nor adequately prepares them for future learning.

While it is widely accepted that the suite of exams and content students are expected to cover is onerous and in need of revision, let us not throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. The Performance Task has been an important development in education, and should be reinstated as part of the terminal assessment at the primary level.

MARIA MUTIDJO

Principal

St Richard’s Primary School