The Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) has agreed to look into and resolve issues surrounding widespread concerns of the results released for the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE).
Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand, made a social media post on Friday saying that following a meeting with CXC, they agreed to: “Review the papers/work of schools pursuant to a request by the Ministry of Education and “Resolve the ‘ungraded’ issue by grading the papers that were already sent to them or the Local Registrar.”
The Minister said that the request to CXC would be made shortly and will be supported by stats validating the concerns.
Registrar of the CXC, Dr. Wayne Wesley, during a virtual press conference on Friday said that while a general re-grading of the results will not take place, Education Ministries and students can submit requests for queries or a review by October 23.
After that, the official CAPE and CSEC results will be released on November 6. Wesley also noted that it was impossible for some of the discrepancies being reported to occur given the rigorous system in place by the Examination Council.
“All our data that we reviewed and have ensured that our processes and systems are in place has not revealed what is being said and I am asking…provide us with the information so that we can address them and where local registrars and ministries have done so we have addressed them.”
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic examinations had been temporarily postponed and were changed to have students be graded using Paper One and their School Based Assessments (SBAs). Wesley clarified that there was no change with the weighting when compared to previous years but noted that Paper Two was not written this year which usually accounts for 40% of the grade.
However, all the SBAs were marked this year instead of random samples and grades were either improved or adjusted.
Queen’s College, Guyana’s top secondary school, had earlier announced its intention to file an injunction at the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) seeking to block the official declaration of the results if CXC does not review the grades.
The authorities at the school also said that they would petition Guyana’s Education Ministry to remove Guyana from participating in future CSEC exams.
