DESPITE better performances in this year’s Primary Exit Profile (PEP) results compared to 2024, the Ministry of Education is to introduce a results profile that will drill down into the output of each school with targeted recommendations aimed at further improving their achievements.

Education Minister Senator Dr Dana Morris Dixon revealed the plan for what has been dubbed ‘School Results Publication’ during a news conference on Friday at the ministry’s Corporate Area headquarters at which the 2025 PEP results were released.

Morris Dixon pointed out that the performance by the students this year was better than last year and argued that the School Results Publication — which will drill down into the output of each institution — will be an excellent tool for them to do even better.

“It will go into detail in the performance of that school, it will compare the school with similar schools, it will also compare the school with the national results and it will also go through each subject strand by strand to say this is how your students did in these kinds of questions and will also give suggestions as to what your plan of action should be, given the specific performance of your children,” said Morris Dixon.

“This will go to all schools… this is a tool that can help our schools to improve their ranking… this is a big time game changer,” she added.

PEP, the national secondary school placement programme — which is administered across grades — consists of performance tasks, ability tests, and curriculum based tests, aimed at measuring the performances of students relative to the objectives of the National Standards Curriculum.

According to Morris Dixon, the achievements of this year’s Grade 6 cohort, which had just started primary school when the COVID-19 pandemic hit Jamaica in 2020, was particularly pleasing.

“These children would have been in Grade 1 when COVID hit us, they would have been in the middle of Grade 1. Grade 1 is a very, very important year and we know that you cannot get everything in an online setting. We also know that many of our children did not have access to the devices that they needed right away.

“So there would have been children in this cohort that would have spent some time outside of school. For two years they were not doing face-to-face learning… they were at a disadvantage,” Morris Dixon told the media briefing.

“These are a special group and so when you look at the results you are even happier because you know what these children would have been through. They have still risen to the occasion,” the education minister said.

She reported that 33,462 students, across 964 institutions, were registered for the exams which saw a 25 per cent decrease in absenteeism (number of students who were registered to sit the exam but missed it).

In addition, the minister said student performance in mathematics overall was 63 per cent, with 56 per cent being ranked proficient, and seven per cent highly proficient.

“Twenty-five-and-a-half-per cent [25.5] of the cohort in the Grade 4 tests were seen as being at the beginning stage — meaning they had some knowledge but not enough to be proficient. However, by Grade 6 this year only three per cent of the cohort were at the beginning level. That’s a big, big deal, going from 25.5 per cent to three per cent,” argued Morris Dixon.

“In Grade 4 only 27 per cent of our students were at the proficient level in mathematics, but by Grade 6 this year 56 per cent were at the proficient level and seven per cent were at the highly proficient level, and so those are some encouraging numbers,” added Morris Dixon.

For language arts, where overall performance was 69 per cent, 67 per cent of students were ranked proficient, and two per cent highly proficient.

Morris Dixon said overall 69.97 per cent of students were proficient in science this year, compared to 69.8 per cent last year, while 71.2 per cent were proficient in social studies this year, compared to 71.8 per cent last year.

“We are on our way, these were not the results last year, nor the year before. Our target in the ministry is to get to 85 per cent proficiency level in all the areas. One of the things we looked at in the data is that for a lot of our children in the developing category… they are almost proficient. So those in the developing bucket they are skewing towards proficiency than they would have been in the past, and that’s another encouraging figure,” said Morris Dixon.

According to the education minister, more students are proficient overall with a 25 per cent increase in the highly proficient ranking.

The minister further indicated that 89.5 per cent of students were sent to one of the seven schools of their choice.

In the meantime, Morris Dixon celebrated the widening of the top schools category.

“The thing I am most happy about today is that the top 10 students used to go to three schools; this year the top 10 students are going to six different schools. The number one student in PEP will be going to Ardenne High School, the number two student to Decarteret College, number three Immaculate Conception, number four Herbert Morrison, number five Campion College, and number six St Andrew High,” said Morris Dixon.

“This is a change. What you are seeing is beautiful. What you are seeing is that there are other schools that are being seen as schools of choice for our children. Also, more of our primary schools have entered into the top 50 ranked schools for PEP performance. Our primary schools are getting better and better.

“In 2025 the first- and second-highest ranking students are from primary schools and more primary schools have entered into the top 50-ranked institutions,” she said.

The education minister also said six primary schools that were on the ministry’s critical list for language arts and mathematics are now at 100 per cent proficiency.