KINGSTON, Jamaica—Seventy-nine per cent of students exiting primary school in June 2026 have demonstrated mastery of literacy, while 75 per cent have mastered numeracy.

Literacy and numeracy competencies were assessed at the grade-six level of the Primary Exit Profile (PEP) for the first time this year.

Addressing Monday’s PEP press conference at Jamaica House, Minister of Education, Skills, Youth and Information, Senator Dana Morris Dixon, explained that the definition of literacy used by the ministry differs from the global definition.

“UNESCO has a definition and it’s basically, can they read and can they write? That’s it. We do not use that definition of literacy in Jamaica. We look at functional literacy. So, we’re not interested in if you can just read something on a paper. That’s not our goal, and that should never be our goal. So, when I give you these numbers, they don’t stack up with the international because we go further in our literacy tests. We actually are doing comprehension and not simple reading and writing,” she explained.

Literacy and numeracy were tested with the addition of 20 questions and 20 minutes to complete the exam.

“In terms of mastery of comprehension, we are at 79 per cent of our students, which is good, and it’s going to get better. Almost mastery is 17 per cent, and non-mastery is at four per cent of our students,” the minister shared.

For those on the cusp, she said seven per cent of them needed one or two more points to achieve mastery.

Turning to numeracy, Morris Dixon shared that in grade four, the cohort was at 69.9 per cent mastery.

By grade six, they were at 75 per cent mastery, 18 per cent at almost mastery and seven per cent at non-mastery.

“The good thing is we now have baselines… from which we can now push performance even further ahead,” she said.

-JIS