Ministry of Education

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Minister of Education, Hon. Andrew Holness

Grade 4 students in all public primary schools will sit a National Numeracy Test tomorrow (May 14), a day after they sat the Literacy Test.

Speaking with JIS News recently, Minister of Education, Andrew Holness said that like the Grade 4 Literacy Test, the Grade 4 Numeracy Test would be analysed by his Ministry and feedback sent to all schools on the performance of every child.

"This will serve to inform the type of intervention necessary to improve the performance of underachievers in numeracy in a similar manner to that which is done for the Grade 4 Literacy Test," he explained, adding that one test would complement the other.

The numeracy test was developed in recognition of the fact that there are new rules of numeracy, which are introduced at Grade 4. "This is why we created this parallel test to the literacy test at Grade 4. It is another method to reveal areas of strengths and weaknesses amongst students, so that intervention can be made before they get to Grade 6," the Minister pointed out.

The new test is a product of the numeracy component of the Ministry's Expanding Educational Horizons (EEH) project, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Piloted in 2006 among 16 schools, the numeracy test was implemented in 71 schools last year. The test pulled from the curriculum, content that is covered in Grade 4.

According to Project Director of the EEH, Dr. Jean Beaumount, "we looked at the Grade 3 and Grade 4 curricula.the strands and expectations for the students at those grade levels, to determine what items would go into the test."

The numeracy test paper is divided into two sections. Section one has 46 multiple-choice items carrying 46 marks, and three open-ended items together accounting for 14 marks. All the items are based on the objectives of the Grades 3 and 4 sections of the National Revised Primary Curriculum (1999), which is being used by all primary level schools in Jamaica.

Experienced mathematics educators were brought in to score the responses to the open-ended items using clearly defined mark schemes, whilst the multiple choice items were scored after being collected in electronic form by data input operators.

The test checks the skills of the children in five areas identified in the curriculum guides. These are number representations and number operations with whole, decimals and fractions, including money, measurement, geometry, algebra, and statistics and probability. The tests are also classified according to three learning levels - knowledge and use of algorithms, conceptual understanding, and reasoning and analysis.

Marks are then distributed by areas and by learning level. Number representations and number operations carry the highest weighting of 50 per cent - 25 per cent each. The remaining 50 per cent is divided among the other four areas, with 17 per cent going to Measurement, 15 per cent to Geometry, 8 per cent to Algebra, and 12 per cent to Statistics.

The distribution of marks by learning level is more heavily weighted towards knowledge and use of algorithms, which account for 50 per cent, followed by conceptual understanding, 30 per cent, and reasoning and analysis, 20 per cent.

The EEH project focuses on improving the standards of both literacy and numeracy in Jamaica at the primary school level. The EEH is one of several programmes being implemented by the Ministry to assist in achieving the target of 85 per cent of students performing at or above grade level in national tests by 2015.

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