Dear Editor,
I see statisticians tripping over themselves trying to unravel the published data for the 2026 National Grade Six Assessment. One point of contention is whether given the use of standardised scores, year to year comparisons can be made. Statistically no, this cannot be done.
However, the ministry has in recent times made public the percentages of each cohort who have attained 50% or more of the maximum marks. If, by that, it means 50% of the raw examination marks, then this is a fixed benchmark that can support cautious (please note cautious) comparisons across years. But this requires that the examinations are broadly comparable in difficulty.
The ministry should therefore state what steps it has been taking, along with the CXC, to ensure consistency in difficulty across each year’s examination, and if the numbers it gives concerning subject pass rates refers to raw scores.
This would be helpful in better analysing the data. But I doubt whether the ministry will respond to a letter to the editor