RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

The Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil (CXC) bet­ter get their act to­geth­er, or else they will face a flur­ry of law­suits, says the sec­re­tary-gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha, Vi­jay Ma­haraj.

His com­ments came a day af­ter stu­dents of St Au­gus­tine Girls’ High School re­port­ed that their School-Based As­sess­ments (SBA) grades for Caribbean Stud­ies were down­grad­ed from an A to a C by CXC, with­out any ex­pla­na­tions.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ma­haraj called on CXC to ex­plain the rea­sons for the down­grade, say­ing CXC’s lo­cal reg­is­trar should be a cat­a­lyst in schools to deal with the in­flux of com­plaints.

“Too many queries are tak­ing place and it is tak­ing too long for these queries to be ad­dressed,” Ma­haraj said.

He said some of the de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools have faced sim­i­lar ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the past.

“If CXC does not ad­dress con­cerns, it will get a flur­ry of law­suits. Our de­nom­i­na­tion­al board schools are af­fect­ed and it is un­fair for stu­dents who could have at­tained a na­tion­al schol­ar­ship. See­ing their marks down­grad­ed is not ac­cept­able, es­pe­cial­ly if they have put in hard work,” Ma­haraj said.

He added, “CXC must ex­plain the rea­son be­hind its de­ci­sions.”

Ma­haraj al­so said there have been ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties be­fore which CXC has not ad­dressed.

“In the past, there have been con­cerns about the leak­age of ex­am­i­na­tion pa­pers. Some chil­dren are told in ad­vance what is com­ing for the ex­ams and this is un­eth­i­cal,” he added.

Ma­haraj said peo­ple were los­ing faith in CXC.

“CXC is now prov­ing that it is taint­ed and par­ents are talk­ing about it,” Ma­haraj said.

On Wednes­day, stu­dents of St Au­gus­tine Girls’ High School com­plained that their SBAs were down­grad­ed by CXC from a Grade A to Grade C. They say this has af­fect­ed their chances of at­tain­ing schol­ar­ships.

The stu­dents who scored Grade 2s and be­low in the ex­ams said about 100 SAGHS stu­dents were down­grad­ed.

The SBAs are in­ter­nal­ly marked by the teach­ers and then hand­ed up to CXC to check them. School of­fi­cials have since sub­mit­ted a query ask­ing for an ex­pla­na­tion of the grades but none was forth­com­ing.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said she was in­formed of the com­plaint af­ter the school ex­pressed con­cern to the lo­cal reg­is­trar, who in turn no­ti­fied CXC of it.

“These types of queries hap­pen every year, and there is an es­tab­lished pro­ce­dure by which they are dealt with and re­solved. The pub­lished CXC re­sults are pre­lim­i­nary, and this is the pe­ri­od where ad­just­ments can be made based on stu­dent queries or con­cerns raised by schools,” the Min­is­ter said.

She added, “The Reg­is­trar of CXC ad­dressed the mat­ters of SBA down­grades gen­er­al­ly in 2020, as the con­cerns were wide­spread through­out all ter­ri­to­ries in many dif­fer­ent sub­ject ar­eas.”

How­ev­er, the Min­is­ter said ad­just­ments to grades are not guar­an­teed.

She added, “The Lo­cal Reg­is­trar will fol­low up on this mat­ter to en­sure that all due at­ten­tion is paid to it by CXC.”