The results of this year’s National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) examinations are set to be released today, but Education Minister Priya Manickchand has made it clear that those pupils who have not returned/replaced textbooks that were loaned to them would have their results withheld.
The Education Ministry publicised this notice on Thursday, and the minister did likewise via her Facebook page. This is in keeping with the MoE’s textbook policy, which states, “Learners must return books before Progress Reports/Examination Results/ Recommendations/References are uplifted.”
Defaulting pupils will also be unable to access their results online or by slip.
The 2023 NGSA results will be announced at 10:00h today, and will be live-streamed on the Education Ministry’s Facebook page.
Manickchand had previously said the Ministry was forced to enforce this policy to ensure that adequate textbooks and similar opportunities are given to the next batch of Grade Six children. While the Ministry caters to a small amount of damage, she had noted, it is a very expensive enterprise to give everybody textbooks.
“And so we have to manage it very, very sternly and carefully, to make sure it passes down,” she had said.
This year, a total of 15,268 pupils had registered to write the NGSA. The assessment papers were translated into Spanish for the first time in order to help Spanish-speaking pupils, many of whom are migrants.
Shortly after returning to Government in 2020, the PPP Government had fulfilled another promise by distributing brand-new textbooks to primary school children in the public school system. They cover the core subject areas: Mathematics, English Language, Science, and Social Studies.
