Carisa Lee

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has not neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed stu­dent per­for­mance in the CAPE and CSEC ex­am­i­na­tions, as there has been an over­all in­crease in per­for­mance when com­pared to pre­vi­ous years.

Ac­cord­ing to Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil Di­rec­tor of Op­er­a­tions Nicole Man­ning said on Tues­day that there has been an in­crease in grade ones, with 12 per cent of CSEC Math can­di­dates ob­tain­ing grade one when com­pared to eight per cent in 2019 and eleven in 2018.

Some 52 per cent of CSEC stu­dents passed Math, a marked im­prove­ment from 46 per cent in 2019 and a slight im­prove­ment from 49 per cent in 2018.

“The coun­cil is hap­py about that,” Man­ning said dur­ing a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence an­nounc­ing the re­sults host­ed by CXC from Bar­ba­dos.

She said 72 per cent of stu­dents across the re­gion who sat CAPE Math at­tained ac­cept­able grades.

But Math was not the on­ly sub­ject where stu­dents at­tained im­proved grades.

Ac­cord­ing to Man­ning, stu­dents showed a slight im­prove­ment for CSEC Eng­lish with 82 per cent at­tain­ing an ac­cept­able grade and 23 per cent re­ceiv­ing grade one. There were al­so slight im­prove­ments in oth­er sub­jects such as Sci­ences, So­cial Stud­ies and His­to­ry.

“We con­tin­ue to en­cour­age the can­di­dates who are prepar­ing this year to en­sure that they per­form as well,” Man­ning said.

The re­gion an­nounced its first case of COVID-19 back in March and since then many events had to be post­poned and changes made to fa­cil­i­tate class­es and ex­ams. One im­me­di­ate change was the in­tro­duc­tion of vir­tu­al class­es for stu­dents, as schools were phys­i­cal­ly closed. Some of these stu­dents had to pre­pare for ex­ams in May/June 2020, a date that was lat­er pushed back to Ju­ly with some changes to the ex­am sched­ule and for­mat.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teacher’s As­so­ci­a­tion had called for the ex­am to be staged in Sep­tem­ber and slammed the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion for not post­pon­ing the ex­ams.

But on Tues­day, CXC Reg­is­trar and CEO Dr Wayne Wes­ley said he was hap­py the ex­am took place when it did.

“Giv­en what has hap­pened in oth­er parts of the world we should be proud,” Wes­ley said.

“We have been able to com­plete the process and be ready for the pre­sen­ta­tion this morn­ing.”

Shar­ing the same view was Bar­ba­dos’ Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, Tech­no­log­i­cal and Vo­ca­tion­al Train­ing San­tia Brad­shaw, who said CXC took a dif­fer­ent ap­proach and they must be ap­plaud­ed.

Brad­shaw told those watch­ing across the re­gion that while COVID-19 has brought its chal­lenges, they pushed ahead with CSEC and CAPE to en­sure no child was left be­hind and to pre­serve the in­tegri­ty of the ex­ams.

“High stakes ex­ams were can­celled across the world,” Brad­shaw said.

CXC will re­lease the of­fi­cial re­sults to var­i­ous ed­u­ca­tion min­istries across the re­gion lat­er Tues­day.