Storm-tested scores - Hurricane ‘resilience’ reflected in PEP results

The Ministry of Education, Skills, Youth and Information says performance in this year's Primary Exit Profile (PEP) examinations remained stable, with most students achieving proficient or highly proficient ratings despite the disruption caused by Hurricane Melissa last October.

“It was a difficult year with the hurricane, but we persevered,” said Education Minister Dr Dana Morris Dixon as she announced the 2025-2026 results during a news conference on Monday.

“These PEP 6 results show us the resilience of our country.”

In mathematics, 61 per cent of students were classified as proficient and eight per cent as highly proficient, while only one per cent performed at the beginning level. This is compared with the 56 per cent of students who achieved proficiency last year.

For language arts, 66.5 per cent of students were deemed proficient and 5.5 per cent as highly proficient, compared with the 67 per cent who were proficient last year.

The PEP exams are Jamaica’s national assessment for grade-six students and are used to place children in high school. They are designed to measure students’ attainment of the objectives outlined in the National Standards Curriculum over a three-year period.

A total of 31,868 students sat at the grade-six level on April 29 and 30.

However, the students did only ability tests because of the disruptions to the teaching and learning process caused by the hurricane. It included 40 multiple-choice questions for the mathematics curriculum-based test, and 60 multiple-choice questions in the language arts curriculum-based test.

Social studies and integrated sciences subjects were omitted.

Meanwhile, 79 per cent of students attained ‘mastery’ in the literacy assessment, 17 per cent achieved ‘almost mastery’, and four per cent were classified as ‘non-mastery’.

The literacy assessment focused exclusively on reading comprehension, as the writing component was not administered due to the suspension of the extended paper.

In the numeracy assessment, 75 per cent of students attained ‘mastery’, 18 per cent achieved ‘almost mastery’ and seven per cent fell into the ‘non-mastery’ category.

The national minimum proficiency target is 85 per cent by 2030.

Rhoda Moy Crawford, state minister in the education ministry, highlighted that there was no decline in performance recorded for students in the parishes most impacted by Hurricane Melissa.

Jassonia Beadle, the head girl of Park Mountain Primary and Infant School in St Elizabeth, is this year’s top primary school PEP performer. She attained 394.2 out of 400 points.

St Elizabeth was one of the hardest-hit parishes by the Category 5 storm, and Beadle’s school was among the 600 impacted.

“I was happy when my result was announced, although I did not expect it to happen. I was a bit nervous when I entered the exam, but then I realised it was nothing to be nervous about,” she told The Gleaner. She will be matriculating to Hampton School in Malvern, St Elizabeth.

Of the 31,868 registered students, 31,565 were deemed to have met the criteria for being placed in a high school, with 90 per cent placed in a school of their choice.

A total of 303 students who were registered for the Grade 6 PEP examination were excluded from placement in a high school.

Among the reasons for exclusion are: the student was absent from all grade-six components administered and is of the age where he or she can remain in primary school for the upcoming academic year.

There were also special requests from parents or principals to have a student sit the PEP examinations but not be placed, as the student will be attending a private high school in the upcoming academic year.

A third reason is that a student’s psycho-educational evaluation report was reviewed by the officers in the Special Education Unit and the student was deemed to be better placed in a special education institution to support their learning needs.

Some 632 students were granted special accommodations to sit the exams. These included extra time, readers or writers, and interpreters, and Braille materials.

A total of 239 students were absent from the examinations, a decline from the 292 who were absent last year.

The main reasons for absenteeism were migration and grade repetition, the ministry said.

Meanwhile, Morris Dixon stated that a committee will be established within the ministry to examine the academic underperformance of boys in the school system, and implement targeted interventions.

She said the committee will work with schools that already have targeted programmes for male students to find out how they can be scaled to improve boys' performance across the island.

“Questions I’ve asked about how the classroom is structured, how the desks are done, how we configure the classroom, how we have more breaks for movement — all of those are important considerations, and so that boy’s committee will come with ideas,” she said.

Approximately 73 per cent of female students achieved proficient or highly proficient status, compared with 65 per cent of male students in the Grade 6 PEP 2025 examinations. Males were also disproportionately represented among the lower achievement levels, the ministry said.

sashana.small@gleanerjm.com