GES to set up a committee to plan next National Standardised Test

The management of the Ghana Education Service (GES) is set to form a technical committee to plan the conduct of the National Standardised Test (NST) for government and private basic school students across the country.

The formation of the committee comes after the GES met with the Director-General and Assessment team of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA) to review the 2021 National Standardised Test results.

Aside from the review of the results of the maiden edition of the Test for primary four public school students, they also discussed challenges that confronted the 2021 national exams and how to prevent reoccurrence in the 2022 edition.

In a related development, the Minister in charge of Education, Dr Yaw Adutwum says all students including private school students will participate in the forthcoming 2023 National Standardised Test (NST).

Addressing the media on educational matters, he said the move forms part of the government’s effort to provide an assessment targeted at measuring the proficiency of pupils at the basic level, especially in English and Mathematics.

Giving statistics of the maiden edition of the National Standardised Test, the Education Minister said a total of 390,000 primary four students from 14,883 public basic schools sat for the national examination across the country in 2021.

“After the test in Mathematics and English Language, primary four pupils in the Ahafo Region posted the highest mean scores of 67 per cent in English and 58 per cent in Mathematics

While those in the Bono Region posted 65 per cent in English and 55 per cent in Mathematics, with those in the Bono East Region scoring 58 per cent in English and 50 per cent in Mathematics,” Dr Osei Yaw Adutwum told journalists.

The national test to evaluate the primary students on whether they can read or not, the Bosomtwe Member of Parliament say will help the government to see the challenges that are confronting the country’s education sector.

“So after the conduct of the national standardised test by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), we expect over 90% of primary students in the country to be proficient in English,” the Minister for Education noted.