Dur­ing Ju­ly/Au­gust 2020, stu­dents across the Caribbean en­gaged in the Caribbean Sec­ondary Schools Ex­am­i­na­tions and the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am and af­ter months of hard work and dili­gent prepa­ra­tion the grades re­ward­ed have been ut­ter­ly de­plorable. The grades re­ceived by sev­er­al A-stu­dents from var­i­ous in­sti­tu­tions in T&T have failed to re­flect the stu­dents’ abil­i­ty and the work they put in. I speak on be­half of every­one when I say that this has se­vere­ly dam­aged our men­tal health and our de­sire to be pro­duc­tive in our stud­ies. The pur­pose of writ­ing this let­ter is to pub­li­cise the var­i­ous ways in which the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil along with the Gov­ern­ment of T&T has failed to sup­port the stu­dents in this dif­fi­cult time.

First­ly, de­spite the chal­lenges of on­line school and the longest school term on record, the stu­dents this year made the nec­es­sary sac­ri­fices to pre­pare for their ex­ams so that their fu­tures would not be jeop­ar­dised. They adapt­ed to the mod­i­fied for­mat of the ex­am­i­na­tions and al­though it was dif­fi­cult they per­se­vered. CXC as­sured the re­gion that their method­ol­o­gy was sound and that their process would pro­duce valid re­sults. How­ev­er, this has not been the case.

Stu­dents with high In­ter­nal As­sess­ment (IA) marks and whose per­for­mances are usu­al­ly ex­cel­lent failed to se­cure ones or even pass­es in more than one of their sub­jects. Where­as stu­dents with low­er marks or who usu­al­ly do not per­form well topped their sub­jects and even schools. Stu­dents with­in the same IA groups, who would’ve re­ceived the same IA mark, re­ceived grades that are so stark, that it is math­e­mat­i­cal­ly im­pos­si­ble. I can say that when I re­ceived my grades on Sep­tem­ber 22, 2020, I cried more than I ever cried in my en­tire life and have since been in the worst de­pres­sion I have ever ex­pe­ri­enced. At­tend­ing school every day, com­plet­ing as­sign­ments and study­ing for ex­ams is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult as my hard work last year got me noth­ing but dis­ap­point­ment. I know that this is the sen­ti­ment amongst my col­leagues as dai­ly, tons of stu­dents some of whom I don’t even know, reach out to me. I have had to take on the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of com­fort­ing sui­ci­dal stu­dents which is an ex­pe­ri­ence I should nev­er have had. It is bizarre to me that de­spite the ev­i­dent dis­crep­an­cies in re­sults, con­stant com­plaints and protest the Gov­ern­ment has done lit­tle to as­sist the stu­dents of the na­tion in cop­ing with their men­tal health.

I will con­tin­ue to go out of my way to en­sure that no fam­i­ly has to lose a child over CXC's non­sense, but it should not be my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. The stu­dents of the na­tion are in cri­sis, the role of the Gov­ern­ment is to serve the peo­ple, yet they have done the bare min­i­mum to mo­ti­vate, sym­pa­thise with us and con­sole us at this time. The fact that they con­tin­ue to al­low CXC to play games with our fu­ture makes me an­gry.

I un­der­stand that the Gov­ern­ment is not at fault for what tran­spired, but by al­low­ing CXC to de­ny us full trans­paren­cy and the grades that we earned is un­ac­cept­able.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, CXC con­tin­ues to take their mer­ry time to re­solve the is­sues, and our Gov­ern­ment is not putting the nec­es­sary pres­sure on the coun­cil. Sev­er­al stu­dents have lost hard-earned schol­ar­ships, got re­ject­ed by uni­ver­si­ties they were pre­vi­ous­ly ac­cept­ed to and have lost im­por­tant op­por­tu­ni­ties that they earned. A lo­cal stu­dent who had been ac­cept­ed to a uni­ver­si­ty abroad was forced to re­turn home af­ter be­ing ex­pelled based on the Unit Two re­sults. I am sure sev­er­al oth­er chil­dren have had sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ences.

The is­sue at hand is very time-sen­si­tive, but CXC con­tin­ues to be al­lowed to take their time. Sev­er­al of my peers are re­peat­ing sub­jects in 2021 which is un­ac­cept­able. They have al­ready put in the hard work, yet they were de­nied their pass­es. There is no as­sur­ance that a re­peat will im­prove grades.

Again, I re­peat that it is un­ac­cept­able that CXC is al­lowed to gam­ble with our men­tal health and fu­tures. The ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem has failed us. This is not ed­u­ca­tion, it is emo­tion­al abuse. I urge our Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, to as­sist us in get­ting CXC to do the right thing. We are not ask­ing for any­thing im­pos­si­ble, we are ask­ing for CXC to have in­tegri­ty. The men­tal health of thou­sands of stu­dents is at stake.

How can we trust CXC's in­tegri­ty mov­ing for­ward? They have shown a com­plete dis­re­gard for ba­sic hu­man de­cen­cy and diplo­ma­cy this year as well as the in­abil­i­ty to be a valid path of as­sess­ment for stu­dents of the re­gion. It is crit­i­cal that the Gov­ern­ment calls out CXC for what hap­pened this year and that it does every­thing in its pow­er to en­sure that this nev­er hap­pens again.

Jus­tice for CAPE and CSEC stu­dents 2020