Females continue to outperform males at NGSA – chief education officer

TIMES INT'L

Chief Education Officer Olato Sam said that an analysis of the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) has clearly suggested that females continue to outperform males in all the subject areas and in all the regions. Sam highlighted that the performance in math has improved over previous years while performance in English and science continues to fluctuate with declines in those two areas being evident.

Olato Sam
Olato Sam

Meanwhile, there is consistent performance across the board and over a number of years in social studies.
“Although improvements have been noted in many regions, coastal regions continue to outperform the hinterland regions, and generally speaking when we look at this more detailed analysis, it is clear that we all (education stakeholders) need to redouble our efforts to ensure that there is improved performance in all subject areas, but more specifically, in those key areas of English and Science that continue to fluctuate over the years,” he said.
Sam recognised that the ministry has done quite a lot with regards to the broader literacy instruction programme and the results seen in math are directly related to the introduction of the Interaction Radio Instruction (IRI) programme. “We are still looking to see a similar trend in relation to English Language,” he added.
The chief education officer also noted that Science is an important subject and with the introduction of some new strategies such as the use of micro-science kits and better training for teachers at the primary level, performance in this subject will improve.
“Our concern with regards to regional performance has always been that we see the hinterland regions being able to close the gap between themselves and the coastal regions… we are encouraged by what we have seen in Region Nine, where we have had the largest number of trained teachers for all the hinterland regions… it speaks to what we know to be sound educational policy and there is a correlation between the number of trained teachers and student performance,” Sam acknowledged.

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