The Education Minister has disclosed that the National Standardised Test would be extended to cover primary 2 and 6 pupils in basic schools.

According to him, the added streams of pupils will participate in the examination this academic year.

“This academic year, we are going to assess primary 2 students, we will assess primary 4 students and primary 6 students,” he indicated.

He pointed out that the objective of the Standardised Testing in basic schools is to “know how well the students are doing.”

Dr. Adutwum said the performance of the students in the test would enable the Education Ministry “to prescribe the appropriate intervention the year after the exam is administered.”

He added that the Standardised test was introduced to ascertain the performance of students and not wait till they are ready to write BECE after 11 years of schooling.

“The giant stride has been made but it is not good enough. We can’t compete with the rest of the world when the first time we get to know of students’ achievement is 11 years after they’ve left us and that has been the norm with this country for a long time.

“We have 2 years of KG, 6years of primary, 3 years of JHS you add it up and that’s 11 years and if at the end of the 11 years that we do our first national exam and whether they do well or not it’s too late for that particular student and other nations around the world are able to assess their students along the line before they hit the 11 or 14 years,” he said.

He stated that the results of the basic 4 students who took part in the exam last year would be released soon and that parents could expect copies of their children's scores.

“For the first time, we are going to have a set of data which will enable us to really prescribe interventions for our schools and begin to look at how we will turn around our schools,” he said.

The National Standardised Test was introduced last year by government as part of its quest to build a robust education system.

Basic four students in Ghana were the first batch to benefit from the initiative.

Their results are however yet to be released, according to the Education Minister.