After two intense days, more than 30,000 grade six students across the island are breathing a collective sigh of relief after completing the 2026 Primary Exit Profile (PEP), the outcome of which will determine their high-school placements.
On Wednesday, they sat papers in mathematics and language arts, and on Thursday, they did the ability test.
On Thursday, the poundiing rain drenching the lush vegetation did not put a damper on the energies of the students at Red Hills Primary in rural St Andrew as they waited for their rides home after completing the final paper.
“The maths was surprisingly easier than all the other exams, and I don’t like maths. The language arts was kinda difficult, but it was manageable and same with ability,” Shantia Cummings told The Gleaner.
“It was easy, but it was too long,” Brandon Burrowes weighed in, speaking of the language arts paper. “It had 60 questions, and every page was a paragraph, but I managed to pull through.”
Paris Martin also found the mathematics paper “a bit easy, but there was, like, a few questions that were a bit challenging.”
“When I was finished, I went over the paper, and I think I got them,” she said.
For Keneilia Morgan, language arts was the trickiest.
“The language arts was very interesting. I didn’t like it. When I read the paragraphs, I had to go back over, but the maths and the ability [tests] were very easy,” she said.
Vice-principal Lorraine Bramwell told The Gleaner that the students went into the exams adequately prepared, which she believes accounted for the confidence exuded by the cohort of 74.
“We have excellent teachers at grade six who worked extremely hard with them in the regular school time and the after-school time, as well as the weekends, and also during holiday period. So, for instance, during the Easter holidays, the teachers were here working with the students,” Bramwell told The Gleaner.
One of those teachers, Roselyn Francis, was all smiles, pleased that her students were expressing relief.
“The feedback has been good. Most of them said it was manageable. Some of them said it went quite well. Some used the word ‘nice’. I was asking if they actually tasted it,” she said, laughing. “But based on the feedback, I think they did well.”
At St Richard’s Primary, also in St Andrew, the students were engaged in a game of roughhousing with the security guard on duty as they, too, relished their post-PEP freedom.
Emma-Marie Donaldson and Liam Swiel were all smiles as they expressed confidence that they would be placed in their schools of choice.
“It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t hard either because I understood the questions, and I was not nervous,” said Emma.
“There were some questions there that I feel like, kinda, caught me off guard a little bit, but thanks to my studying, I was able to understand it more clearly once I got the concept of what they were saying,” explained Liam.
When The Gleaner visited Dupont Primary in Olympic Gardens, St Andrew, the students milling around said they, too, were now looking forward to reclaiming weekends and holidays, heading into the summer break.
Jade Crosdale and Michael Goldbourne beamed with confidence as they looked forward to high school, and they praised their teachers for adequately preparing them despite the disruptions brought by Hurricane Melissa last October:
“The exams were good, except for the maths. The maths was kinda hard. Some of the questions challenged me, but I answered everything,” said Jade.
“It was quite easy in my opinion because we practised a lot of this, so we, basically, understood what was on the paper. We were well prepared,” Michael said.
Grade Six Coordinator Ramone Cox praised the students for their sacrifices as the exams required giving up a lot of free time.
“Outside of the preparations, including workshops, we also prayed with them. We had devotions on both [exam] days. We gathered and we prayed over them, prayed with them, and encouraged them to pray, too. They have all expressed confidence that they did well. We are very pleased,” Cox told The Gleaner.
The Ministry of Education removed science and social studies from this year’s grade six assessment as part of measures following Hurricane Melissa.
The results are expected by the end of June.
karen.madden@gleanerjm.com
