By Kurt Campbell
![Education Minister, Priya Manickchand and Chief Education Officer, Olato Sam along with some of the top CSEC students. [iNews' Photo]](https://i0.wp.com/www.inewsguyana.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/CSEC-1.jpg)
Education Minister PriyaManickchand announced this morning that in Math, the grade one to three pass rate for 2014 is 38.7%; indicating an over 9% increase from 2013 where the grade one to three pass rate was recorded as 28.92%.
Meanwhile, the grade one to three performances in English A recorded a marginal increase from 45.69% in 2013 to 46.98% in 2014 while performance in English B remained relatively constant.
But while these two subjects recorded improvement, the overall pass rate, particularly for mathematics remain unsatisfactory with less than 50% passes.
Manickchand explained that in other parts of the Caribbean, students are only allowed to write Math and English if they pass a pre-test; pointing out that every child in Guyana, regardless of performance, is allowed to write the subjects.
She recalled too the pilot project that was implemented in 2012 to improve poor performances in several subject areas and attributed the improvements recorded partially to the project.
“Let’s take East Ruimveldt Secondary, 4% of their students last year passed mathematics… this year 41% of their students passed… these kinds of remarkable improvements didn’t happen by magic… the pilot project has done remarkably well and I think it is worthy of a national rollout,” Manickchand said.
The Minister observed too that Private Schools, which also benefited from the pilot project, showed remarkable improvements.
Other subject areas that showed excellent improvement are Agriculture, Food and Nutrition, French, Home Economics Management, Information Technology, Physics, Religious Education, Theatre arts and additional mathematics among others.
Guyana’s top CSEC Student is Elisa Hamilton of Queens College who gained 19 Grade Ones and 1 Grade two.
At number two are: BhartiBhoge of Skeldon Line Path Secondary, who gained 17 grade ones and Larissa Whilthire of Queens College who also gained 17 Grade Ones, while Skeldon Line Path Secondary TressyiaKetwaroo secured fourth spot with 16 Grade Ones and 1 Grade Two.
In fifth spot is Lisa John with 16 Grade Ones and one Grade 2.
Some 13,724 students wrote the 2014 exams; 5,082 from private schools and 8,642 from public schools with 4,887 accounting for males and 8,837 accounting for females.
