Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia says 61 per cent of the stu­dents who wrote this year's CAPE ex­am­i­na­tions have re­ceived five or more pass­es.

CAPE re­sults were re­leased on­line on Wednes­day and ear­li­er to­day.

Gar­cia and chief ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer, Har­ri­lal Seecha­ran sat with The Morn­ing Brew host Hema Ramkissoon to dis­cuss the re­sults.

“About 61.06 per cent of the stu­dents who wrote the ex­ams ob­tained five or more pass­es and we know that five pass­es con­sti­tute a full cer­tifi­cate,” Gar­cia said. “We are very pleased with the stu­dents how­ev­er, there is al­ways room for im­prove­ment and we are work­ing with our teach­ers, prin­ci­pals, and school su­per­vi­sors to en­sure that there will be an in­crease in the per­for­mance of our stu­dents all around.”

Seecha­ran elab­o­rat­ed on the re­sults say­ing that over­all, lo­cal stu­dents were able to main­tain high lev­els of pass rates set by their coun­ter­parts in 2018.

“Last year we had over 95 per cent pass rate in CAPE and we have man­aged to main­tain that this year with 95.17 per cent of stu­dents get­ting Grade Ones to Five in Unit One. In Unit Two last year we had 24.74 per cent of the stu­dents get­ting Grade Ones, this year it's 34.58 per cent—that's al­most a ten per cent in­crease,” Seecha­ran said.

He said there has al­so been an in­crease in the num­ber of stu­dents ob­tain­ing Grade Ones in the CAPE ex­am as com­pared to the 2018 re­sults.

“CAPE re­sults have al­ways been ex­cel­lent how­ev­er, what we have done and what we have been see­ing is that not on­ly have the pass rate of the grades been high but the qual­i­ty of the grades have been im­prov­ing. Last year we had 26.8 per cent of our stu­dents get­ting Grade Ones, this year we have 29.83 per cent get­ting Grade Ones.”