National Exams, grade 9 results (UPDATED)

Earlier this month I shared that MTM 6th graders had a 90% passing rate on their national exam. Well, the 9th grade results were released last week and I have the breakdown to share. For a review of the national exam policies, read my previous blog post about it.

There were 52 students in grade 9 at the end of the 2010-2011 school year. (It was a really full room!) I haven't confirmed that all 52 of them took the exam, but I assume they did. My percentages are all based on having 52 kids in the class. Either I was wrong about how many students were in grade 9 last year, or not all of them took the national exam. There were 50 kids from MTM's school in Gramothe that took the 9th grade exam.

Exactly 12 of our 9th grade students did not pass the exam. They will have to repeat 9th grade again this year and take the exam again next summer. When Arold gave the names of the students who didn't "meet success" as my students would say, I was really sad. It seems there's a whole bench of girls (they always sit on the same benches in class) that didn't pass. I don't know if they just didn't study enough or if they struggle in other subjects. They were on the high end of average for English, so it will be interesting to see their specific scores.

That means 38 out of 50 students passed the exam, giving 9th grade a 76% passing rate. I'm so excited to see these students move on to 10th grade! The 9th grade exam had 1400 points possible in 6 different subjects: Creole, French, social science, Biology , Math, and English or Spanish. (I don't remember if the students get to choose the foreign language they want to test in or if the government decides each year.)  Students needed at least 700 points to pass the test. The highest score an MTM student received on the 9th grade exam this year was 956, and actually two students had that score. The lowest score of an MTM student in 9th grade was 452.