The Ministry of National Education, through the Directorate of Basic Education (DEF), conducted a pre-testing operation last week for the official exam papers for the 11 subjects of the 9th Fundamental Year.

440 students from four public schools and 16 private schools, located in the Delmas and Pétion-ville school districts, participated in this activity. Carried out in close collaboration with the West Departmental Directorate of Education (DDEO), the operation mobilized inspectors, DEF technicians, and exam paper writers.

From April 20 to 25, 2026, educational supervisors, text writers, inspectors, and technical staff from the DEF were mobilized at the General Inspectorate to conduct a rigorous review of student papers, data entry, and assessment of student work.

The objective of this exercise was clear : to test exam text models under real-world conditions in order to measure their pedagogical relevance. It also aimed to verify the level of difficulty of the exams, evaluate the time required for students to complete them, analyze the clarity of the instructions, and ensure their conformity with the established academic standard.

According to Kendy Nicolas, Director of the DEF, this approach is part of a rigorous vision of pedagogical management. "We no longer want to design exams based on hypotheses. We want concrete data from the field. This pre-test allows us to adopt a scientific approach to evaluation, where each text is analyzed, adjusted, and validated before being integrated. This guarantees quality for our students and for the entire education system."

This pre-test aims to refine assessment tools to better reflect students' skills. School principals also highlighted the two main advantages of the pre-test. Firstly, it helps prepare students psychologically and improve their performance; secondly, it helps schools better tailor their teaching methods before official exams.

IH/ iciHaiti