Come clean on the challenges facing PEP, Thwaites tells gov't

Opposition spokesman on education, Reverend Ronald Thwaites says the government must come clean on the challenges facing the Primary Exit Profile (PEP) examinations as the future of the nation's children is at stake.

Thwaites, in a statement yesterday, accused Education Minister Ruel Reid of misleading the nation about the performance of students who sat the PEP performance mock exam.

He noted, too, the delay by the education ministry in releasing the detailed results of the mock exam after they became available.

“After this refusal, the minister led the nation to believe that over 80 per cent of the students [who sat the mock exams] performed satisfactorily and the rest would soon be assisted to catch up,” said Thwaites.

“The country now knows that none of that is true,” he asserted.      

Thwaites charged that the education minister “fudged the figures for raw political ends, equating the few who performed satisfactorily with those who did not meet the standard and now has his ministry officials trying to justify the falsehood.”

“How can a ‘near pass’, be the same as a good pass, which is what the students and the nation need?” Thwaites questioned.

He described the results of the mock exam as dismal, asserting that only approximately 25 per cent of students attaining the standards in English, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies.

Thwaites said the Opposition People’s National Party wants an urgent national consultation on the state of primary education.

In addition, he says there needs to be a “massive” retraining of teachers to enable them to “redress the bungled way” in which the National Standard curriculum has been imposed by the education ministry.

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