Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh has re­vealed that the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil has re­moved its ex­ist­ing lo­go from the Web site and is now mov­ing to re­strict in­ter­ac­tion on its grade ac­cess­ing por­tals, af­ter re­ports of CXC grade tam­per­ing on-line. Speak­ing with re­porters dur­ing a tour of the Tabaquite con­stituen­cy yes­ter­day, Gopeesingh said he first be­came aware of the is­sue on Thurs­day evening and he im­me­di­ate­ly con­tact­ed CXC's chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer and reg­is­trar, Dr Di­da­cus Jules, who was in Lon­don. "I spoke with Dr Jules and he said that he had re­ports that stu­dents were tam­per­ing with grades on-line and he had to re­move the lo­go from CXC so that any stu­dent who at­tempts to print the on-line grades as one of of­fi­cial tran­scripts will be found in breach," the min­is­ter said.

"I want to re­mind stu­dents that do­ing this is a crim­i­nal and fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ty. "The tran­scripts that we are giv­ing to all schools from CXC are the ones that have been sent by CXC to us. "We are giv­ing these tran­scripts to school su­per­vi­sors and prin­ci­pals and that is the of­fi­cial tran­script." Gopeesingh warned that "any stu­dent who at­tempts to pre­pare tran­scripts that are dif­fer­ent from the re­al re­sults will be li­able to face penal­ties for fraud." He could not say, how­ev­er, what the penal­ties were. "I think I have to be guid­ed by the le­gal team about the penal­ty... They will prob­a­bly have to ad­vise me of this," the min­is­ter said.

"Stu­dents could be found guilty of a crim­i­nal of­fence so we are warn­ing them of this. "CXC will al­so look at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the need to re-ex­am­ine the re­sults and not to be able to have in­ter­ac­tive process­es through the In­ter­net to view these re­sults." Asked whether the on-line grade tam­per­ing had oc­curred on­ly in T&T, Gopeesingh said no. "I be­lieve it has hap­pen­ing in one or two oth­er coun­tries as well," he added. "They im­me­di­ate­ly con­tact­ed the Su­per­vi­sor of Se­cu­ri­ties for CXC ex­am­i­na­tion and they have been work­ing on it. "They were not will­ing to say how much of these stu­dents did it. "It is dif­fi­cult to do it, but in fu­ture Dr Jules said it will be mon­i­tored."

Jules, a St Lu­cia na­tion­al, was ap­point­ed reg­is­trar of CXC in April 2008 and was in­volved in the set­ting up of on-line re­sults, for the first time in his­to­ry, this year. Stu­dents wish­ing to view their re­sults were asked to en­ter their ten dig­it reg­is­tra­tion num­ber, last name and date of birth to ac­cess their re­sults from the por­tal http://ors.cxc.org//stu­dent­por­tal

CXC lo­cal reg­is­trars and prin­ci­pals of schools were giv­en the priv­i­lege to re­strict ac­cess to the re­sults from some schools and can­di­dates if they deemed it nec­es­sary for com­pli­ance rea­sons. CXC al­so made broad­sheets, cen­tre sta­tis­tics and mer­it lists avail­able to school prin­ci­pals via the on-line reg­is­tra­tion sys­tem.