We all know how well the top finishers like Rasine Gillet and Eric Lin from St. Joseph School did in this year's primary school examination.
Well, there was a slight increase in the overall national average on the PSE, but that's a small shift from about 50% to 54.6% percent range which means our children are still not making the grade.
Yvonne Davis, Principal Education Officer
"Overall this year we feel that the children made some strides toward improvement in many areas but there is still a whole lot left to be desired in terms of acceptable performance. But in the overall picture you could say there is some move towards improvement in the system and in the way the children have responded to the tests this year."
And while three private schools topped the list, there was a surprise in fifth place from Toledo's Mafredi Methodist School. Principal Education Officer Yvonne Davis says Mafredi's success has shattered many pre-conceived notions.
Yvonne Davis,
"Again there are a number of perceptions in regards to what could contribute to good performance in example the private schools versus the government or church/state schools. Some people will tell you it is economics because the children who go to private schools, the parents pay for everything including tuition. This is opposed to the children who go to other schools that would not pay as much. Some people feel that is one of the variables."
And now to the bad news about our students: across the board Davis says again they are having problems mastering or even writing English. In some sections of the English paper there was a dip in performance and Davis likens the performance in English to a disaster area.
Yvonne Davis,
"In writing, now that's a major disaster area for us this year. Still a lot of work needs to be done in the writing paper, especially in the letter writing component of the exam. This year the children were asked to respond to a formal letter and we found out that they had difficulty setting up the formal letter and addressing the question in a formal way."
Is there any reason why our children are doing so badly in English?
Yvonne Davis,
"I would feel that it is two things: the way we communicate is one of the reasons I thing would contribute to that and another thing is the insufficient practice that is given or not given to the use of the language. We must always remember that English is a second language for us. And we must continue to practice it and the only way to perfect it is to practice it. Our children need to be exposed to all different types of writing and to write everyday. Write about all sorts of things and to express themselves in all different types of situations they will encounter in their lives."
That can solve the English problem but what about the always-problematic mathematics? Well you might be surprised.
Yvonne Davis,
"Particularly in the problem-solving paper, which used to be the most challenging paper for the students, we noticed an increase of about 10%. There are some areas or particular concept areas that we still need to work a bit on. For example in relation to constructing a graph we found out that the skill of setting up a consistent and accurate scale was a major problem across the country. Multiplication tables are still a major problem and children lose a lot of points for not multiplying correctly. So we noticed those are still some areas that we need to work on in mathematics."
But even with the modest boost in math and science scores, and the encouraging results on the newly introduced social studies component - our primary schoolers national average is still in the 50% rage and Davis says that is nothing to celebrate.
Yvonne Davis,
"We have been testing for quite some time now, at least I have been here since 1992, and we have not seen much increase in the performance. It has always been just below the 50% level and now it's just beyond the 50% level. We should be way beyond that so that maybe the question is have we set the barriers too low? I don't think we have. I think it's getting the system to now move up.
And with scores this low - right now education isn't the hope for a young and growing nation, it's a fear.
The PSE's top finishers will be honored at a ceremony on June 17th.