NPP introduced National Standardized Test in 2021 — Former MoE PRO rebuts Haruna Iddrisu

Kwasi Kwarteng, the immediate past Public Relations Officer of the Ministry of Education, has reminded the new Minister of Education Haruna Iddrisu that the National Standardized Test (NST) already exists.

On Monday, February 17, as part of broader efforts to improve educational outcomes in the country, the minister announced that the new government would introduce the NST.

The initiative, he noted, would be expanded to cover four classes—Primary 2, Primary 4, Primary 6, and Junior High School (JHS) 2—to help prepare students both mentally and academically for the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).

“I am happy to announce that the National Standardized Test will be introduced for Primary 2, Primary 4, Primary 6, and JHS 2. The intention is simple. We don’t want a situation where a child’s first exposure to a formal exam is the BECE, without ever experiencing the psychological environment of an examination room.

“Therefore, we intend to introduce the NST as a structured assessment to help students gradually adapt to examinations and improve the quality of assessment in Ghana,” the minister said.

However, Kwasi Kwarteng described the claim as misleading, stating that the initiative was first introduced under the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government in 2021.

In a post on Tuesday, February 18, he explained, “Similarly, the assertion that the NDC government is going to ‘introduce’ a National Standardized Test (NST) is equally misleading. The NST initiative was first implemented in 2021 under the NPP administration, with three nationwide assessments conducted."

The first, he said, was administered to Primary 4 students in December 17, 2021 with 470,768 pupils from 15,391 schools participating. The results showed that 38% of students were proficient in English, a significant improvement from the 2% proficiency recorded in the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) conducted in 2015.

"The second NST assessed Primary 2 pupils in public and selected private schools. July 2024 – The third NST was conducted for 895,685 students at both Primary 4 and Primary 6 levels," his post added.