Basseterre, St. Kitts, April 1, 2022 (SKNIS): The new national assessment dubbed Key Stage Assessment of Learning (KAL), which is set to come on stream shortly will be implemented in stages, said the Acting Director at the Curriculum Development Unit – Teacher Resources Center (CDU-TRC) within the Ministry of Education, Amanda Serrant-Edmead, during her March 30 appearance on Working for You.
“We are implementing the national assessment in stages. So, this year, we are just using Language Arts and Mathematics and only components of it and then next year we will roll out more of the assessment in other subject areas,” said Mrs. Serrant-Edmead.
Acting Director Serrant-Edmead gave a breakdown of the two subject areas that will be focused on for the 2021-2022 Academic school year.
“The curriculum for Language Arts has three strands. It has deviated from where it was before. We have reading and writing, viewing and representing, listening and speaking,” said Mrs. Serrant-Edmead. “So, in terms of Language Arts, you are looking at for example, can a student in viewing and representing look at an image and infer information from that image? In writing, can they use the writing process to develop a piece of work? Those are some of the things that are entailed in Language Arts.”
She noted that the Mathematics module hasn’t changed much.
“For Mathematics, you have more or less similar strands from before where you have the Geometry, Measurement, Algebra etc. So, the curriculum is designed to assess those aspects of the curriculum based on the different strands and what we have as our essential learning outcomes and our specific curriculum outcomes,” said the acting director.
The national assessments planned for 2022 are expected to provide feedback to the Ministry of Education on the effectiveness of the enhanced curriculum in Language Arts and Mathematics, inform decision making about education programmes and services, guide continuous system and school improvement, provide teachers with knowledge about student progress that will inform their approaches to instruction, and serve as an accountability measure to the citizens and residents of St. Kitts and Nevis.
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