While assuring that all preparations have been made for the sitting of the National Grade Six Assessment on Wednesday and Thursday, the Ministry of Education yesterday announced that it would allow students the option of wearing casual clothing rather than their school uniforms.

In a press release, the Education Ministry said that NGSA candidates are not required to wear their uniforms and that casual but modest clothing could be worn instead. However, it specified that the clothing must also have little or no writing, pictures, and or diagrams that would give cause or contribute to any form of cheating.

In announcing policy changes for the sitting of the exams, the ministry said they are aimed at serving the best interest of students.

The assessments will be written on Wednesday, with English Paper One and Paper Two being written in the morning and Science Paper One and Paper Two in the afternoon, while on Thursday candidates will be writing Mathematics Paper One and Paper Two in the morning and Social Studies Paper One and Paper Two in the afternoon.

According to the ministry, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, regulations and guidelines have been established to ensure the safe and incident-free writing of the examinations. These measures include requirements for the sanitising and washing of hands by all before they enter examination buildings, the wearing of the recommended face mask, observing and maintaining social distancing at all times, and the cleaning and sanitizing of buildings and furniture.

In addition, the ministry said candidates will be allowed to leave the examination centres to have lunch but must return at least 15 minutes before the beginning of the next session. Candidates can take a bottle of water or suitable liquid to drink into the examination room once the bottle has no writing that can aid the student in the examination.

It also announced that there are 33 new examination centres spread across the eleven education districts where candidates will be writing the examination. The ministry has also established emergency centres that can accommodate those candidates who may have tested positive for COVID-19 or are in quarantine. This was done for the 2021 CSEC and CAPE examinations whereby COVID-19 positive candidates were accommodated and allowed to write their examinations in a separate building, the ministry noted.

Parents of Grade Six students who have tested positive or are in quarantine but are still able and wish to write the examination are asked to contact their school’s Head Teacher or indicate the same to the Department of Education in their region. Parents can also call 226-1237 to make the necessary arrangements.

Another addition to the administering of the assessment is that candidates who are 12 years and 7 months and older will not be penalized with respect to their raw scores as in previous years. “This category of candidates will have their raw scores standardized the same way as all other candidates. In addition, the individual subject scores for each candidate will be given to decimal places and their total score will be rounded to the nearest whole number”, the release said. The ministry explained that this is to ensure a more accurate reflection of each candidate’s performance.

All Grade Six students in the public education system have received an NGSA Care Package containing face masks, pencils, Saying that the most glaring challenge for African Guyanese is economic inequity, the Society for African Guyanese Empowerment (SAGE) has urged that they demand that the issue be treated as a national emergency.

“The inequalities and inequities are most manifested in that area of activity. It is estimated that African Guyanese own less that 15 percent of the country’s wealth. This is due in part to a lack of generational wealth and in part to the way in which the economic institutions discriminate against those without wealth. African Guyanese must be afforded formal opportunities in the economic sphere including ownership of Black-owned banks committed to serving the peculiar needs of the Black community and access to government contracts by Black contractors. Equality of outcomes must be premised on equality of opportunity,” the group said in an Emancipation message that was issued on Saturday.

SAGE called on African Guyanese to confront their economic condition by demanding that all parties treat the economic erasers, a sharpener, hand sanitizer and ruler, the ministry said. It also reminded that many platforms were created by the ministry to ensure students are prepared. Distribution of study packages containing social studies and science notes, worksheets for the four subjects, past papers from the last five years and 12 textbooks on the four subject areas of English, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies, the launch of the Quiz Me Platform on the ministry’s website, the NGSA Booster Programme and airing of educational videos on the Guyana Learning Channel and uploaded to the Guyana Learning Channel’s YouTube channel were cited. inequity as a national emergency. “In a country soon to be flushed with more wealth than at any time since emancipation, this ethnic-racial economic gap cannot continue. It is a recipe for heightened conflict. While it is the responsibility of the government to act, the burden lies with African Guyanese. They must demand policies aimed at their particular condition. The “one tide lifts all boats” approach will not suffice. African Guyanese must organize themselves in pursuit of this goal. Black Lives Matter must include the notion that Black ownership of wealth matters as the lack of economic wealth is a clear and present danger to Black livelihood,” it added.

According to SAGE, after 183 years African Guyanese have made some important steps towards transforming the “emancipation moment into a state of freedom.” It argued that there have been constitutional changes and other legal statutes that embed the equal humanity of Africans. Further, it says Black Guyanese have risen to heights in our society that

Group urges African Guyanese to demand economic inequity be treated as national emergency

their fore parents could hardly imagine. “SAGE therefore rejects the view that nothing has changed for Black people—a lot has changed, but it must be stressed that those changes came despite much institutional and other barriers to Black [advancement],” it added.

At the same time, SAGE said it must also be stressed that changes must not mask the challenges that African Guyanese continue to face in an independent Guyana. It said the scars of enslavement and colonial domination are still fresh on the psyche of a society that has not shaken off the vestiges of anti-black racism. “Our institutions from police to the justice system to the education system still make assumptions about African Guyanese based on the meaning of their skin color. These are in many regards more subtle than overt, but they are there just beneath the surface,” it noted.

SAGE also urged African Guyanese to eschew a Guyanese nationality that silences or erases African identity and other forms of ethnic identity. It contended that the erasure of African identity is accompanied by the erasure of Black history and cultural heritage. “Such erasure means that slavery and emancipation would lose their centrality to our historical memory and rob African Guyanese of a significant point of reference. The affirmation of African Identity has significance for Guyanese and Caribbean identity. Since the formal education system would most likely frown on including African history and culture as a central plank of the curriculum, the burden falls on African Guyanese organizations to lead the charge in this regard,” it added.