The Ministry of Education is reporting that 81 per cent of primary-school pupils who sat the Grade Four Literacy tests in May and June achieved mastery. According to the release, this is a seven per cent increase on previous years.

Approximately 45,809 students out of the eligible 46,389 students in both public and private establishments participated in the exams in May this year. More than 33,000 students who sat the test in May mastered all three components of the test, which included word recognition and reading-comprehension tasks.

Of the 853 primary schools that participated in the exams, 32 did not require the intervention programme - which allowed students who failed to master the test the opportunity to do a resit.

Around 12,251 students who did not master the test and fell in the 'almost mastery' and 'non-mastery' categories, were encouraged to sit in June.

The National Literacy Strategy, as previously mentioned by Laurel Brent-Harris, national literacy coordinator of the education transformation team, is part of the ministry's efforts to achieve a target of 85 per cent mastery by 2010 and 100 per cent mastery among the grade four cohort of students.