“Do your very best” – Education Minister urges pupils as NGSA gets underway
As the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) commences today, Minister of Education Priya Manickchand has urged pupils to do their best during the examinations.
“You are ready for today. But I also want to tell you this: all we require of you is that you do your very best today,” Minister Manickchand stated in a video posted to Facebook.
“Everybody is not going to get into Queen’s College, not because everybody is not bright but simply because Queen’s College has a limited number of seats.”
Minister Manickchand noted the unique challenges the pupils have faced due to the COVID-19 pandemic but assured them that the Ministry of Education has taken significant steps to support their academic journey.
The Minister highlighted the various measures implemented to ensure students are well-prepared, including curriculum adjustments, provision of study materials, teacher training, and practice exams.
“Your curriculum was consolidated to test up to a Grade Five level. You have gotten all the textbooks you could possibly need and all the support online and otherwise; your teachers have been trained and retrained in what is coming, and you are the fourth batch of children writing this type of exam.”
The Education Minister added, “You have passed papers that look exactly like what your paper will look like today. You are the first set of children that did a National Grade Five Diagnostic Assessment to see what it is your teacher may have missed in Grade Five so that we could clean it up into Grade Six year.”
Furthermore, Manickchand offered practical advice to the pupils, encouraging them to read questions carefully, pay attention to keywords, and use elimination strategies for multiple-choice questions.
She also reminded them to check their answers, reassuring them that extra time had been allocated.
Against this backdrop, she reassured the pupils that they would receive a quality education regardless of the secondary school they were placed in. She highlighted ongoing efforts to improve education infrastructure, with plans to build 20 new secondary schools by mid-next year.
The exams, which commenced today, will conclude tomorrow, May 3, and the results are expected by July 15.
