THE Ministry of Education has said it is identifying schools that have developed best practices in the administration of the Grade One Individual Learning Profile (GOILP), with a view to help boost learning outcomes.

The information gathered from GOILP — a test sat by children who enter grade one of primary schools each year — is being used to train teachers and student-teachers to improve their performance and to better identify children with developmental challenges that impact on their learning.

However, efforts to obtain statistics from the ministry on the performance of the children on the GOILP over the last four years have been unsuccessful.

The GOILP, which replaced the Grade One Readiness Test in 2008, is part of the education ministry’s thrust to achieve 100 per cent literacy in primary schools by 2015.

It aims to determine the readiness of grade one children for the schools, and also the readiness of schools to accept the children. But the test is not meant to predict how well children can do in school, indicated Dr Rebecca Tortello, senior advisor to the Minister of Education Andrew Holness, who is also Jamaica’s prime minister.

“The GOILP is not a diagnostic test and as such has no predictive value on student achievement; it was not designed for that purpose. It is meant to assess the student’s readiness for grade one and the school and classroom’s readiness for the child and to identify areas of strengths and weaknesses to then be targeted accordingly,” Tortello told Career & Education.

She noted that the education ministry has disseminated information and conducted training on how grade one classrooms are to be set up in accordance with early childhood learning standards and shared best practices for teaching at that level.

Dr Andre Hill, national literacy co-ordinator in the Ministry of Education, said schools indicate to the ministry that they have at-risk students in grade one, based on the GOILP data, and usually receive some support from the respective regional literacy teams — inclusive of the regional literacy co-ordinators and literacy support specialists.

“For example, training seminars are held with teachers, focusing on strategies that can be used to assist struggling learners. Also, the literacy specialists provide direction in the generation of special intervention programmes to address the needs of the students,” Hill told Career & Education.

However, he gave no indication of the number of at-risk students in grade one.

Tortello said “parents receive the information from their schools and the data forms part of each child’s school registration form at grade one”.

Approximately 50,000 children enter grade one in public and independent (private) schools each year.

Greater attention is being placed on early childhood education in recent times, with both major political parties calling it a priority area for the education transformation programme to be successful.

The performance of students at the grade-four and grade-six levels are well known, but figures on development at grade one are harder to come by.

The issue of child development also came into focus two weeks ago because of the decision of the prime minister and his wife to temporarily pull their children from the school system to be homeschooled.

The Holness’ said it was a proactive move to address the learning challenges of one of their sons who was falling behind in his lessons.

Some educators have also pointed to the failure to recognise difficulties in young children, such as poor sight and hearing as contributing to the unsatisfactory performance in literacy and numeracy tests later on.

But Hill said the ministry “trained a teacher in every public primary, primary and junior high and all-age schools in 2008, in administering visual and auditory screening tests among children”.

He said specialists in both areas were contracted by the ministry to train the teachers.

Tortello also noted that the GOILP includes “identifying and supporting students showing signs of learning challenges for whatever reason”.

She said improvements to the grade one test were ongoing and includes plans for additional training at the pre and in-service levels involving the quality education circles and other vehicles.