Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant

A le­gal let­ter has been sent to Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil (CXC) chair­man Sir Hi­lary Beck­les de­mand­ing that the coun­cil call a spe­cial meet­ing to dis­cuss sev­er­al mat­ters and is­sues aris­ing from com­plaints of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the grad­ing of this year’s CAPE and CSEC re­sults.

The let­ter was is­sued by at­tor­ney D.P. Al­la­har on be­half of the boards of the Do­mini­can Sis­ters and Holy Ghost Fa­thers, which runs sev­er­al Ro­man Catholic schools in T&T. It called on Beck­les, as chair­man, to call the spe­cial meet­ing to dis­cuss the is­sues.

It list­ed the fol­low­ing ar­eas as need­ing to be ad­dressed:

(a) the re­spec­tive weights ac­cord­ed to the Ex­ter­nal As­sess­ment and the School-Based As­sess­ments;

(b) the method­ol­o­gy or al­go­rithm used for the mod­er­a­tion of all School-Based As­sess­ments for all sub­jects;

(c) the method­ol­o­gy or al­go­rithm used to cal­cu­late the fi­nal over­all grades for all sub­jects;

(d) a sus­pen­sion of the ex­am­i­na­tion reg­u­la­tions (in­clud­ing the time-lim­its for any re­views and queries) pend­ing a full au­dit of the process lead­ing up to the award of all fi­nal marks in the 2020 ex­am­i­na­tions by an in­de­pen­dent, ex­ter­nal au­dit­ing firm ap­point­ed by the coun­cil; and

(e) that all stake­hold­ers (in­clud­ing min­istries, schools and stu­dents) be pro­vid­ed in the in­ter­im with the in­for­ma­tion in (a), (b) and (c) above; and the tak­ing of any oth­er mea­sures to pre­serve the in­tegri­ty and rep­u­ta­tion of the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil while en­sur­ing the trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty of its op­er­a­tions.

The let­ter added, “Chair­man, this re­spect­ful de­mand, is based on the in­escapable con­clu­sion that the “new” process­es utilised by CXC for the 2020 CAPE and CSEC ex­ams were flawed.

“You would read­i­ly agree that these are crit­i­cal is­sues that re­quire ur­gent clar­i­fi­ca­tion, au­dit and res­o­lu­tion be­fore any fi­nal grades are is­sued.”

It said in the event the re­quest is de­nied, the at­tor­neys will urge the T&T Gov­ern­ment to col­lab­o­rate with its re­gion­al coun­ter­parts to ur­gent­ly con­vene such a meet­ing of the coun­cil.

“For too long the CXC has op­er­at­ed with­out ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy, im­mune from ju­di­cial re­view and as a vir­tu­al mo­nop­oly, in dis­re­gard of the rights of stu­dents who are ul­ti­mate­ly the con­sumers of its cer­ti­fi­ca­tion ser­vices. It is in­sult­ing that the CXC Reg­is­trar has re­fused to give our Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion any in­for­ma­tion on the ma­tric­u­la­tion of the SBAs un­til af­ter re­views are con­duct­ed; en­cour­ag­ing stu­dents to in­stead use the ex­pen­sive re­view process,” the let­ter stat­ed.

The let­ter said the lawyers were pre­pared to take the mat­ter to the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice to get re­dress.

Af­ter the re­sults were re­leased last week, many stu­dents com­plained about not re­ceiv­ing grades ex­pect­ed based on their School-Based As­sess­ments (SBAs). Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly al­so con­tact­ed CXC Reg­is­trar Dr Wayne Wes­ley af­ter re­ceiv­ing com­plaints from sev­er­al schools. Wes­ley promised to ad­dress the con­cerns, al­so raised by oth­er coun­tries, ex­pe­di­tious­ly.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Beck­les said CXC had met with min­is­ters to dis­cuss the con­cerns and iden­ti­fy the un­der­ly­ing caus­es with a view to pro­vid­ing clar­i­ty to its stake­hold­ers.

“CXC is sat­is­fied that min­is­ters have re­ceived ex­pla­na­tions for its po­si­tions in light of the pub­lic dis­course. It is un­der­stood that while there might be pol­i­cy and tech­ni­cal is­sues to be ad­dressed im­me­di­ate­ly, the main­te­nance of pub­lic trust go­ing for­ward is para­mount,” Beck­les said.

Beck­les as­sured every re­port­ed case will be re­viewed and reme­dies will be ap­plied where re­quired. He said an in­de­pen­dent re­view team will be­gin this work short­ly and present a re­port for dis­cus­sion with rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers.