What has happened to more than 600 students who had registered for the Primary Exit Profile (PEP) examinations held last March remains a mystery.

According to statistics provided to the Jamaica Observer by the Ministry of Education and Youth (MOEY), more than 600 students, from both sexes, failed to participate in the exam, and it is uncertain what will happen to them, assuming that they are still in the school system.

There was no official comment from the education ministry as the Sunday Observer prepared for its deadline, but one senior officer suggested that none of the more than 600 could be placed in a high school without sitting the PEP examination. The official said that it was likely that all would have to do a resit next year, regardless of the reasons provided by their parents or guardians for their absence.

It is understood that among those who were registered to sit the examination were children who have emigrated to countries in the regions of North America, the Caribbean and the United Kingdom.

In April last year the education ministry reported that more than 32,000 students had been missing from the formal education system since March 2020 when the novel coronavirus pandemic hit.

The ministry subsequently implemented what it labelled a ‘Yard to Yard, Find the Child’ initiative to identify, locate and re-engage students, given the pandemic’s impact on the education system.

Two months ago, Education Minister Fayval Williams said that schools had almost returned or are fully back to pre-COVID-19 levels of student attendance.

The Sunday Observer also found that 26 per cent, or 8,105 of the approximately 35,500 students who sat the PEP examination, were placed in the school of their first choice. The overall number included 18,452 males and 17,653 females.

The education ministry had said recently that 85.5 per cent of students who sat the examination had been placed in schools of their choice. Each student can select from seven schools of choice.

The placement method of the 85.5 per cent accounted for 30,984 students being placed at one of the seven school choices given to grade six PEP students. The ministry stated that the remaining 4,521 students were placed at secondary schools either in close proximity to their home addresses or manually.

“Of the 17,380 females sitting the assessment, 15,303 were placed by preference while 2,060 were placed by proximity and 90 manually. Of the 18,125 males sitting the assessment, 15,681 were placed by preference, 2,074 by proximity and 476 manually,” the ministry said in the breakdown of its statistics.

A deeper look at the MOEY statistics showed that 5,432 students, which is 18 per cent of candidates, were placed at their second choice school. At the same time, only 2,246 students are heading to the school at the bottom of their list.

While it did not provide further insight, the ministry shared that 31,902 students were placed at secondary high schools, while technical high and agricultural high accounted for 3,567 and 201 placements, respectively. Fourteen students were placed at institutions specialising in special education.

A total of 5,789 beneficiary students under the Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH) sat the 2023 grade six PEP exams. The ministry’s data showed that 89.4 per cent of the students on PATH received one of their seven choices, while 8.1 per cent were placed in proximity to their home and another two per cent manually. Twenty-nine PATH students were absent from the exams.

In comparing the placements of students over the last three years, the ministry noted that there have been steady performances and “no significant change in the distribution of placement.

“It should be noted that even though the tests and/or components used to place students have changed over the past three years, the mechanism used to place students remains the same,” the MOEY said.

The ministry explained that similar to the previously used Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT), the PEP uses the total placement score for ranking and placing students based on a weighted formula of standardised test scores.

Speaking at the ministry’s PEP results press conference last month, Williams lauded students for the increase in the proficient and highly proficient categories of the examination when compared to 2019.

Williams said that of the students who sat exams, 57 per cent scored in the proficient and highly proficient category in mathematics when compared to 41 per cent in 2019. In science, 64 per cent of students were proficient and highly proficient in comparison to 49 per cent in 2019, while for social studies the numbers were 63 per cent in 2019, and 67 per cent in 2023. Language arts saw a 55 per cent score in 2019, while 60 per cent of students scored in the categories this year.

Stating that the country’s education sector is “encouraged” by the results, Williams said “We know going forward we’ll continue the plans, we’ll continue the emphasis we had on literacy and numeracy. We’ll continue the coaching programmes that we have, all the strategies that our teachers use in the classroom to pull out students,” she said.

In the meantime, a further look at the ministry’s PEP statistics showed that for the academic year 2022/2023, two criteria were used to place students on the Secondary Pathway Programme. They were language arts achievement and the grade six ability test percentile rank.

According to the ministry, the 22,073 students placed in Secondary Pathway 1 are those who have shown competence and are deemed ready to access the content at grade seven. The 11,550 students in Secondary Pathway 2 will need minimum support in accessing content at grade seven.

The 1,995 students who were placed in secondary Pathway 3 will undergo a psycho-educational assessment to determine the targeted programme of study they will receive at the secondary level, the MOEY said.

The ministry also noted that special considerations were given to the 30 special needs children who sat the 2023 PEP exams.

“The unique needs of each child are assessed by the Special Education Unit and the schools they are placed in are evaluated to ensure that they will be fairly accommodated,” the ministry said.