Grade 3 students across Punjab to take part in test

Six-monthly assessment will be made in three subjects - Urdu, Mathematics and English next month

LAHORE: The Punjab School Education Department (SED) has ordered to prepare for the six-monthly assessment of grade 3 students in public and Punjab Education Foundation (PEF) schools.

A total of 430 schools have been selected for the assessment for March 18, out of which 250 are government-run schools and 180 are PEF schools. The children of these schools will take part in the examination scheduled to be held between February 26 and March 10. The schools are selected from all 36 districts of the province. The assessment will be held for three subjects -Urdu, Mathematics and English.



According to a letter sent by the SED, "The department is making concerted efforts to improve quality of education by measuring learning outcomes through the six-monthly assessments of Grade 3 students of government and PEF schools across Punjab."  The letter gave instruction for the staff of various departments and officials involved with the assessment process and also informed that external invigilators would conduct the exam. SED Secretary Dr Allah Baksh Malik told The Express Tribune that the assessment was part of the government’s literacy and numeracy test, through which they test the learning outcomes of children.

The assessment was aimed at testing what the teachers’ have taught and what has been learned by the students. The test was not a traditional test, which the SED takes every three months, rather it had multiple choice questions, he said.

“This assessment is in addition to exams taken by the SED and was administered and monitored by an external agency,” he said. He added that the current assessment was the mid-term test, and another one would be taken in October, when the academic year ended. He said that this assessment, taken by an external agency, was used to devise the district ranking of schools.

The letter asked the District Education Authorities (DEAs) Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) to start preparing for the assessment and directed teachers in their jurisdiction to prepare their students for the tests. It further said that the Technical Assistance Management Organisation (TAMO), a private firm, and School Reform Roadmap team representatives would perform the invigilation and monitoring duties of the assessment test in selected schools. The letter stated, "CEOs (DEA) are requested to ensure schools cooperate with the invigilation and the monitoring teams at the time of the test."



The letter said that the District Field Coordinators (DFCs), CEOs (DEA) and other officials would also pay surprise visits to schools during the test hours. Furthermore, the representatives of the Chief Minister's Roadmap Team would visit the test schools and submit their observations to the SED.

In a separate letter, the SED informed the District Monitoring Officers (DMOs) to engage Monitoring & Evaluation Assistants (M&EAs) in the monitoring of the exam. It stated that the MEAs' role would primarily be to monitor the conduct of the exam and their duty schedules would be shared later by the department with the CEOs.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 8^th, 2018.