Standard 4
At Primary school level, the Examinations, Research and Testing Division administers the Standard Four Attainment Test and the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE).

Standard 4 Attainment Test
This is the test that serves as a check point to enable the teachers to diagnose the learning problems of children in order to plan remedial measures. The tests cover all the work in the four levels of the lower primary.

Presently it is administered just before the switch from Setswana to English as a medium of instruction which is in standard five. However, in the near future the medium of instruction will be English from standard two.

How Did It All Start?
It had been realised that there were problems associated with the quality of education in the primary schools, and the major root of such problems was the system of automatic promotion. Therefore, the 1977 Commission on Education discovered that actual learning achievement of many of those reaching standard seven under the automatic promotion system is extremely low . .

Many children are virtually illiterate at standard seven when they have nearly completed the primary course. The number who cannot read the most simple sentence is as high as thirty or forty percent. Because there is no check on performance at each grade, both children and teachers in the lower grades have no means of measuring learning attainment and how far this is above or below.

As a result, the Commission recommended that a " national test be administered after standard four and children lagging seriously behind should repeat the standard before proceeding to the higher standards."

Up to now standard four pupils have been writing attainment tests in English, Maths and Setswana.

Development and Administration of Tests
Examinations subject officers invite about three or four teachers in their subject area to develop such tests, as well as their marking keys. The tests are then printed and dispatched to the Regional Education Offices where they are in turn distributed to schools. The teachers administer the tests and mark them soon after the standard seven pupils have completed their exams.
With the guidance from Primary Department, the schools look at the test scores to determine who needs remedial teaching and who can proceed to standard five.

However, ERTD has not received reliable feedback from the schools as to how the tests are performing. We are currently working on an instrument for collecting data on the performance of the tests.