Botswana Examinations Council conducts the Standard Four Attainment Tests by preparing the tests for Mathematics, Setswana and English and distributing them to schools to administer, mark, and grade. Schools then use the results as part of the evidence to decide whether a pupil should be retained in standard four or proceed to standard five.

There is no standardisation of the administration, scoring or grading of these tests and there is therefore no national picture of how the pupils are performing on the tests. In 2007, Botswana Examinations Council used these tests to conduct a study to provide a national picture of student performance at this level. The tests were administered at school level and scripts from a stratified random sample of 103 schools were marked in-house, adhering to standardised conditions under the supervision of BEC officers.