There has been an over­all in­crease in the per­cent­age of pri­ma­ry school pupils meet­ing or ex­ceed­ing stan­dards re­quired for Stan­dards One and Three in math­e­mat­ics and lan­guage arts in 2012 com­pared to the pre­vi­ous three years.

Mak­ing the state­ment yes­ter­day was Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh at a press brief­ing at the min­istry, St Clair.

In 2012, 18,542 pupils in Stan­dard One and 19,948 pupils in Stan­dard Three wrote the na­tion­al test in maths and lan­guage arts.

The min­is­ter said lit­er­a­cy al­so had im­proved by about 50 per cent in Stan­dards One and Three and in math­e­mat­ics there was about a 40 per cent in­crease in Stan­dards One and Three.

The suc­cess­es were at­trib­uted to in­ter­ven­tion­al strate­gies, in­clud­ing dis­cus­sions with prin­ci­pals, fill­ing of teacher va­can­cies and im­prove­ment in in­fra­struc­ture, Gopeesingh added.

The mea­sure­ment was done ac­cord­ing to the Aca­d­e­m­ic Per­for­mance In­dex (API) and was a joint ef­fort be­tween the Di­vi­sion of Re­search and Eval­u­a­tion of the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry and the School of Ed­u­ca­tion of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine.

A school's score or place­ment on the API, Gopeesingh said, was de­signed to be an in­di­ca­tor of its per­for­mance lev­el for math­e­mat­ics and lan­guage arts at Stan­dards One and Three.

The com­pos­ite score varies from 0 and 560 and is used to place schools in four cat­e­gories:

Ex­celling (401-560)

Most­ly ef­fec­tive (241-400)

Aca­d­e­m­ic watch (81-240)

Aca­d­e­m­ic emer­gency (0-80)

There were 25 schools which fell un­der the API's aca­d­e­m­ic watch cat­e­go­ry, which meant in­ad­e­quate num­bers of pupils were meet­ing or ex­ceed­ing stan­dards in one or more classess or ar­eas of learn­ing. It al­so meant that pupils re­quired im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion to spe­cif­ic chal­lenges faced by the school. Out of those 25 schools, 14 were from Port-of-Spain. They in­clud­ed both gov­ern­ment and pri­vate schools.

A com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors, Gopeesingh said, would have con­tributed to this low per­for­mance, in­clud­ing home prob­lems, poor ed­u­ca­tion lev­els among par­ents, neg­a­tive cli­mate and cul­ture of the school. In maths, Gopeesingh said, in 2012, 68 per cent of pupils met or ex­ceed­ed the ac­cept­able stan­dards in Stan­dard One, com­pared to 51 per cent in 2011.

"Six­ty-five per cent of pupils writ­ing math­e­mat­ics in stan­dard three met or ex­ceed­ed the ac­cept­able stan­dards in 2012 com­pared to 2011," the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter said. Fifty-five per cent of pupils in Stan­dard One writ­ing lan­guage arts al­so did so, com­pared to 38 per cent in 2011. The fig­ures for Stan­dard Three were 67 per cent in 2012 and 42 per cent in 2011.

"In 2012 there was al­so a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in pupils not meet­ing the ac­cept­able stan­dards in lan­guage arts," Gopeesingh said. Say­ing no school fell in­to the aca­d­e­m­ic emer­gency cat­e­go­ry, the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter added:

"The re­sults showed a sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in the per­for­mance of pri­ma­ry schools in 2012, with a large shift in num­ber of schools un­der aca­d­e­m­ic watch mov­ing in­to the most­ly ef­fec­tive cat­e­go­ry, and schools in the most­ly ef­fec­tive cat­e­go­ry mov­ing in­to the ex­celling band."

What is the na­tion­al test?

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion's na­tion­al test is an an­nu­al stan­dard­ised ex­am cov­er­ing lan­guage arts, maths, sci­ence and so­cial stud­ies. The test is giv­en to Stan­dards One and Three pupils in both pub­lic and pri­vate pri­ma­ry schools, who write the test at the end of the school year.

The ob­jec­tives are:

Gath­er in­for­ma­tion for de­ci­sion-mak­ing at the school, dis­trict and na­tion­al lev­els.

Iden­ti­fy ar­eas of the sys­tem that re­quire fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Iden­ti­fy na­tion­al norms.

Com­pare stu­dents' per­for­mance by school and ed­u­ca­tion­al dis­tricts.

Track stu­dents' progress through school.