THREE months into the 2016/2017 academic year, grade four students at the Zion Hill Primary School are yet to start the new curriculum that would aid the transition from the Grade Six Achievement Test to the new Primary Exit Profile (PEP).

In June, chief education officer in the Ministry of Education, Dr Grace McLean, told reporters and editors at the Jamaica Observer that September would be when the ministry would roll out the National Standards Curriculum in grades one, three, four, seven, eight and nine, which she said would adequately prepare students to sit the exam in March 2019.

“What this means is that the students who are in grade four will commence the new curriculum this year. So we have 2016/17 for grade four, 2017/18 for grade five and 2018/19 for grade six. So you will have the set of grade four students this coming school year being the first group that will be sitting the PEP,” she said at the time.

But last week when Jamaica Observer North East visited the institution, senior teacher Lena Nugent Morgan said the grade four teachers have been teaching the old curriculum since September.

“The difficulty with that now being implemented is that we don’t have the curriculum to really start that programme from grade four, because you know two years from now it’s going to be them that will be doing the PEP exams,” admitted Nugent Morgan.

“I don’t know the medium by which it should reach here, but the teachers are having difficulty accessing the curriculum,” she continued.

She said the teachers have attended numerous sensitisation workshops and were promised the curriculum, but the students are being disadvantaged.

“So even though they went to the workshop and were sensitised and were promised the curriculum, they have a difficulty accessing it,” she stated.

Noting that the sensitisation started with grade four teachers, as those students will be the first batch to sit the new exam, Nugent Morgan highlighted the disadvantageous situation.

The roll-out of PEP was initially slated for the 2017/18 academic year, but was this year rescheduled to the academic year 2018/19.

According to McLean, PEP will be an assessment that will be closely aligned to the National Standards Curriculum.

Zion Hill Primary has a population of over 200 students.

— Jediael Carter