WHILE some grade four and five students at Kingston and St Andrew schools Iris Gelly Primary, St Francis Primary and Mico Practising Primary and Junior High School who sat the Primary Exit Profile (PEP) Mock Examination in June left the room with a sigh of relief, others were in tears and distress.

Asked about the responses of his students who sat the exam on June 18 and 19, Kemoy Smellie, grade five teacher at Iris Gelly, told the Jamaica Observer that he got a lot of tears.

“There was one particular boy in my class who literally cried that he was being stressed out, that he was being forced to think because he was never exposed to this level of critical thinking,” he said. “So it kinda frustrated them. Many of them in the class were frustrated because they did not know what to do.”

Smellie said that although he believed that the PEP was a good initiative by the Ministry of Education to develop students’ ability to think critically, he did not agree that it was ready to be implemented in primary schools, as he thought students were not yet properly trained for it.

“This exam requires a lot out of [students],” he commented. “I think for this exam it is too much thinking for their level…The PEP is not ready to be rolled out. I think they need to give the teachers some time to teach the children how to think. So keep it back for a little while and take the time to introduce it. Just like a baby, you don’t just give them food like that; you take time and introduce them,” he expressed, adding that for students, like those in his class, who were academically challenged, the exam puts them at a great disadvantage.

Two of Smellie’s students, Eboney Francis and Kemaro Buckley, who sat the Performance Task test in mathematics and language arts, told the Sunday Observer that the exam was “very hard”.

“My class exams before were easier than the PEP exam,” Francis said. “What I studied for came on my class exams, but what I studied for PEP, did not come on the exam and there was no multiple choice, you had to explain yourself.”

Buckley said that though he tried his best, he still found the exam to be difficult because it required him to explain his answers, which he said he was not very good at.

However, fellow grade five students at Iris Gelly Primary, Sherike Johnson and Ishange Barnett, sang a different tune, expressing that for them the PEP mock exam was not as bad as they had anticipated, and having done the Mock Performance Task test in language arts, mathematics, social studies and science, they were more confident in their abilities to do well in the grade six PEP exam.

Meanwhile, at Mico Practising Primary and Junior High, grade four student Keanna Spence, who sat the exam on June 22, told the Sunday Observer that the exam was ‘manageable’ for her because she prepared well.

“The PEP mock exam was manageable,” she shared. “I didn’t feel scared or nervous because our teacher gave us revision and Saturday class and extra lesson. So I understood the terms that we got on mock exam. The only part I found a little challenging was the maths. Some of the questions I didn’t understand, but when I read correctly, I started to get a little of it. PEP was a little harder than my usual exams, but, as I said, it was manageable. I liked it,”she added.

Commenting on his experience the PEP mock exam, fellow grade four student at Mico Practising Ajani Braham said he was confident that he did well on the exam.

“It was great. I feel good, because I know that I studied,” he said. “I looked over everything that I did, so I feel good about the grade I’m going to get. However, it was kinda challenging because of how you have to reason, how you have to set out the questions, because I usually do everything in my head and not on paper, so that was the only part that I had to deal with.”

Grade five student at St Francis Rushaugn Bent said he breathed a sigh of relief once the exam was over.

“When I heard that they removed the multiple choice, pain started occuring to me because I was like, oh my God, it’s gonna be so hard,” Bent expressed. “But it wasn’t really that hard. When I finished it, I felt very good about myself. I think I did good in the test.”

Highlighting that she had a challenge explaining her thoughts, grade four student at St Francis Shamoya Allen said she made extra preparation for the exam in an effort to improve her reasoning and writing skills.

“I didn’t find it challenging overall, only some parts where I had to explain myself,” she said. “But I wasn’t nervous because my mother told me to have confidence in myself and tell myself that I can do it.”

But for Allen’s classmate, Dana Williams, it was maths that gave her a great challenge.

“It was very hard, Williams said. “Especially one of the questions about fractions was giving me a lot of problem. PEP is really harder than my other exams.”

Meanwhile, grade five teacher at Iris Gelly Primary Michell Ward told the Sunday Observer that though she welcomed the PEP, she believed that training for the exam should begin earlier than grade four.

“I think that it should not just be a grade four target,” she said. “You want to groom them as early as grade one, coming up. So the grooming should not have started at grade four, because if this becomes the norm, where you know that we are not doing multiple choice, it’s you finding the answer and you explaining in your own words the answer, then it becomes a habit. So for you to be used to be doing the multiple choice and now you are being asked to do something totally different, for me I think there is a disconnect… I think in itself it can be a good thing if more thought goes into it. I think it needs to be pepped up a little.”

Similar sentiments were shared by grade five teacher at St Francis Shena-Rose Bartlett, who said she believed it was unfair for the current grade five students to be the first cohort to take the PEP exam in grade six, as she said they needed more time to prepare.

“For me, personally, as a teacher, I think it would have been best for the students who were in grade one last year and are finishing grade two now; they were the first set of PEP students,” Bartlett said. “I think it would’ve been fair to just work with those students coming up and then we could have a better result because they would’ve had more time to engage in the PEP assessment, the PEP way of doing things, instead of students who have just got two years to come from 360 to another 360,” she added.

Commenting on the rather complex questions she saw on the mock exam, Bartlett also recommended that the Ministry of Education create question-formulating workshops for primary school teachers so that they can apply these principles in the classroom when assessing their students.

But for grade five teacher at Mico Practising Michelle Wright, though there was a short time to prepare the students for the exam, which required a lot of reading and explaining on the students’ part, she believed that once all teachers came on board and adjusted their lessons to suit the requirements of PEP, then “we’ll be okay”.

“Of course in everything you have advantages and disadvantages. Going forward, if all the schools come on board and review the way they set test items, the way they teach, the way they deliver and execute lessons, it is a welcome change for the most part,” Wright said. “I do appreciate this exam. As I said before, it will be a lot of work, you know, as in everything when changes come about, you have glitches, but if we all try to get on board and meet the children where they are, fixed what needs to be fixed, we’ll be okay.”

Grade four teacher at St Francis Primary Janise Blake-Palmer said that her students expressed to her that they found the mock exam to be challenging as they were not accustomed to the length of reading and explanation which the exam required. She, like some of her teaching colleagues, also believed that students should have been given more time to prepare.

“I love the PEP, based on what I see so far, and what it can do for them,” she said. “But as it relates to them doing the exam, I think not enough time was given to prepare them, because GSAT was more geared with multiple choice and I know prior to GSAT the students were being trained to do the short answer and essay type questions. So with this coming on stream now, where they will have to do a lot more thinking and writing the children need to be trained more,” she added.

PEP, which will replace GSAT as the national secondary school entrance test, will place increased emphasis on student’s communication, critical thinking and problem-solving skills in an effort to provide a better profile of students’ academic capabilities. It consists of three components; a Performance Task Test, Ability Task Test and a Curriculum-Based Test.

Students who are currently in grade five will be the first PEP cohort. They will do only the grade six component in 2019. The students who are currently in grade four will do their grade five performance task in 2019, and in 2020 they will do the grade six components.

Students who are currently in grade three will be the first cohort that will have a complete profile generated — that is, they will do the grade four component in 2019, grade five in 2020, and all grade six conponents in 2021.