Blaize tops exams

Common Entrance has been killed but the exams that replaced it to usher students to secondary school is alive. And humming.

No longer is the national annual exam a ticket to enter secondary school- everyone enters- but it offers bragging rights to the top five, especially the top one. (The student and her parents).

It's a licence to say "mirror, mirror on the wall who's the brightest of them all".

In 2016 Heimish Blaize stands before the mirror.

Blaize, a student of the Roseau Primary School secured the top position at the Grade Six National Assessment.

The results of the examination were announced at the Windsor Park Sports Stadium Conference Room today, June 27.

The other top students were: Jada-Madison Joseph of the St John's Primary; Megan Vidal of the St Martin's Primary; Nechante LeBlanc of the St John's Primary and Naome Samuel-Williams of the Ebenezer Seventh Day Adventist School.

"I feel really excited, I guess I feel proud of myself," Heimish Blaize said.

He added that his teachers and his relatives pushed him towards his goal.

In spite the fact that Roseau Primary reopened the new school year two months late Heimish said the work was not difficult.

He said he plans to attend to the St Mary's Academy.

"I think it will be a very good school a school that will help me a lot in my education to push me forward," he said.

Jada-Madison Joseph of the St John's Primary said she felt excited and expressed thanks to her parents and teachers for encouraging her.

Megan Vidal of the St Martin's Primary said: "It is a very wonderful feeling; I am really glad and thanks be to God, my teachers, my parents, they really worked hard on me everyone in my family believed in me and I am thankful that I wasn't a disappointment."

She said that with God's help she knew she would have performed well at the Grade Six National Assessment.

Megan added that she hasn't decided on a career path; however, she knows that God will lead her into the right direction. Megan has her eyes set on attending the Convent High School.

Nechante LeBlanc of the St John's Primary said: "I feel excited; excited to the max and also very relieved that I did very well."

She said that her parents helped her succeed but also two of her teachers held extra classes with her.

Naome Samuel-Williams of the Ebenezer Seventh Day Adventist School said: "I cannot express how happy I feel. I really could not do it without my teachers and God because he is my rock and I always depend on him."

She noted that certain aspects of the examinations were different than what she was taught; however, she always kept studying so she was able to complete all the questions.
Naome looks forward to attending the Convent High School.

Meanwhile, Senior Education Officer Robert Gusite said there was a significant drop in performance this year in few of the subjects.

"If we compare the results we will see that we had a very significant drop in the performance in Language Arts 1; it moved from 39.7 to 39.1. The overall average in terms of percentage we had 65 last year, 64 this year," he said.

Guiste noted that there was a slight decline in science from 33.8 to 32.6 and in social studies there was a significant decrease from 33.5 to 33.3

However, he stated that there was an increase in performance in composition and mathematics.
Guiste also informed that: "After the exams were done there was a lot of talk about the results and the science paper being very difficult and there were two questions which may not have had an answer…but we dealt with that an eliminated those two questions so the science paper was marked out of 48 and not 50."

He said that the western district performed better than the other districts in every paper.