Curriculum needs to be adjusted for better literacy

THE EDITOR, Madam:

The Minister of Education, Dana Morris Dixon, recently announced that there will be adjustments to the Primary Exit Profile (PEP) Examination, a three-year-long assessment done by grade 4 to 6 students, and the results of which determine high school placements. While this is welcomed, real change hinges on adjusting the onerous curriculum this examination ultimately evaluates.

Teachers are often unable to focus on helping students develop essential skills due to the limited time available to cover the vast amount of content they are expected to learn. As a result, high schools are increasingly being forced to implement remedial programmes to reteach fundamental concepts that students should have already mastered.

The curriculum must be whittled down. This is particularly true of the expansive science and social studies syllabi, much of which is repeated in the early years of high school.

While this heavy curriculum may benefit publishers, who produce tomes that teachers and students rarely manage to complete, it does not promote deep learning. Instead, it overwhelms students with memorising and regurgitating facts they are likely to forget immediately after the examination and reduces the time available to develop foundational skills like reading.

A curriculum that prioritises quantity over quality is destined to fail, a fact for which there is ample evidence in Jamaica. We must begin to focus on what is truly important for primary school–aged students to learn and commit to delivering it effectively. As such, only a comprehensive review and adjustment of the curriculum will improve the PEP examination.

CONCERNED EDUCATOR