Changes for PEP in 2021

The Ministry of Education, Youth and Information has made changes to next year’s sitting of the Primary Exit Profile (PEP), to take account of the interruption in students’ studies due to the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Speaking during Tuesday’s sitting of the House of Representatives, Portfolio Minister, Fayval Williams, said that the Performance Task and the Curriculum-Based Test have been delayed until later in the year.

In addition, the content coverage on which students will be assessed has been reduced.

Williams said for the academic year 2020/2021, the Ministry intends to administer PEP at grade six using the usual approach guided by the COVID-19 protocols.

“These students’ profiles will comprise grade-four PEP done in 2019 and the grade-six components to be done in 2021. The Ministry will advise on the weighting to be applied after a comprehensive study to be done by the consulting psychometrician on the students’ actual data,” she said.

How PEP will be administered 

* The first component to be tested at grade six is the Ability Test which will be administered Tuesday, February 23, 2021.  It will measure students’ ability to reason with words and quantities and will consist of 40 single select multiple-choice items.

* Language Arts Performance Task will be administered on Thursday, April 22, 2021, and the Mathematics Performance Task will be conducted on Friday, April 23, 2021.

* For the Curriculum-based Test, the dates for grade-six students are Tuesday, May 25, 2021 – Language Arts and Science; and Wednesday, May 26, 2021, for Mathematics and Social Studies.

* The scores for the Performance Tasks for Language Arts and Mathematics will be combined with the scores the students receive in the respective Curriculum-based Tests to give an overall score of the students’ achievement of the learning goals of the National Standards Curriculum for the different subjects.

- JIS News 

Follow The Gleaner on Twitter and Instagram @JamaicaGleaner and on Facebook @GleanerJamaica. Send us a message on WhatsApp at 1-876-499-0169 or email us at onlinefeedback@gleanerjm.com or editors@gleanerjm.com.