KINGSTON, Jamaica — Thirty-one thousand, four hundred and seventy-nine or 84.44 per cent of students who sat the 2021 Primary Exit Profile (PEP) examinations have been placed in one of their preferred schools.
This was disclosed by Minister of Education, Youth and Information Fayval Williams on Friday during a press conference at the ministry’s offices in Kingston.
She said 4,315 or 11.58 per cent of the students were placed in secondary schools that are in proximity to the schools they currently attend, while a further 2.09 per cent or 778 of students were placed manually in secondary schools in proximity to the address they submitted at registration.
“Even though the tests and/or components used to place students have changed over the past three years, the mechanism used to place students remains the same. We are, therefore, confident that even in this unprecedented COVID-19 crisis, the method used to place students this year is fair, reliable and consistent with what previously existed,” she said.
Williams noted that since 2015, parents have been given the opportunity to indicate two additional school choices to the standard five that they had in the past.
The minister said that the computation of the Placement Score for 2021 comprises five tests, Grade Four Literacy, Grade Four Numeracy, Grade Four PEP Performance Task in Mathematics; Grade Four PEP Performance Task in Science, and the Grade Six Ability Test in 2021.
She explained that exams that were taken in grade four, the weighting would be 20 per cent, while for the grade-six ability test taken in 2021, the weighting was 80 per cent.
Williams also said that although 37,278 students were registered to sit the PEP Ability Test, only 37,139 students participated.
Placement of students in high schools was done using the May 26 Ability Test scores combined with the results of the Grade Four Performance Task exams in Language Arts and Mathematics that the students took in 2019.
The changes were brought about by restrictions to contain the spike in cases of COVID-19.
—JIS
