THE Primary Exit Profile (PEP) Performance Task Tests scheduled for March 19 and 20, have been postponed.

These exams would have fallen within the 14-day school-closure period announced by Prime Minister Andrew Holness at a press conference at Jamaica House, yesterday.

Holness said this decision to close all public schools was taken after consultation with the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information, and will be reviewed after 10 days.

Permanent secretary in the ministry, Dr Grace McLean, said that the ministry is reviewing the schedule for PEP.

“The ministry has the capacity to postpone this assessment and to make a determination later, depending on the number of days that the students are going to be out. So we will assess after the next 14 days, and based on what happens then, we may take a decision for the postponement of the assessments to take place in April,” she said.

Grade six students are scheduled to sit the curriculum-based tests on April 23 and 24.

Dr McLean said that “where [the students] are not able to sit all three sets of papers, we have already done one [on February 25] and we have their grade-five assessments that could also be utilised in this specific case”.

Grade five students are scheduled to do the Performance Task on May 28 and May 29; and grade-four students are scheduled to do PEP Performance Task Tests on June 25 and 26.