Lee An­na Ma­haraj

Re­porter

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

Fol­low­ing the leak of the Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate’s Math­e­mat­ics Pa­per II ear­li­er in June this year, which caused the ex­am pa­per to be scrapped, the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil has re­leased their mod­i­fied grad­ing ap­proach.

In an on­line brief­ing yes­ter­day, of­fi­cials stat­ed that Pa­per I, which ini­tial­ly car­ried 30 per cent of the weight, will now car­ry 60 per cent, while Pa­per III, or the School Based As­sess­ment (SBA), which car­ried 20 per cent, will car­ry 40 per cent in­stead.

When asked how the coun­cil plans to pre­vent a leak from hap­pen­ing again, CXC’s Di­rec­tor of Op­er­a­tions Dr Nicole Man­ning said new sys­tems have been put in place.

“We have new sys­tems in terms of the qual­i­ty re­quire­ments and that’s some­thing that will be shared in the fu­ture. Where we have a breach, it must be not­ed that we have changes in the util­i­sa­tion of those cen­tres in the fu­ture ... But CXC is im­ple­ment­ing new sys­tems, and more so the elec­tron­ic test­ing is where we want to go and where we have been go­ing,” said Man­ning.

She added that the new sys­tem will be bol­stered.

“One of the first and im­por­tant points to make is the move to elec­tron­ic test­ing, it is a strat­e­gy that CXC has start­ed, in terms of util­i­sa­tion and we have seen ben­e­fits from it. As well as, we have the col­lab­o­ra­tion with our lo­cal reg­is­trars which we con­tin­ue to en­hance, and strength­en as we would have done in the past al­so.”

Man­ning ex­plained that CXC will stop util­is­ing cen­tres where breach­es oc­curred.

The leak, which orig­i­nat­ed in Ja­maica, forced CXC to dis­con­tin­ue Pa­per II in all 19 ter­ri­to­ries. Some stake­hold­ers were con­fused as to why all coun­tries had to pay the price, even though the leak was in one coun­try.

“We’re not pe­nal­is­ing one ter­ri­to­ry or two ter­ri­to­ries or the re­gion for one ter­ri­to­ry. We have to look at it from an ob­jec­tive man­ner, where all ter­ri­to­ries may have had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to see the pa­per. And we do know that oth­er ter­ri­to­ries would have had the pa­per, it would have been shared in oth­er ter­ri­to­ries, giv­en es­pe­cial­ly, you know, in the dig­i­tal age,” Man­ning said.

“We can­not say that all 19 ter­ri­to­ries that par­tic­i­pate in our ex­ams would have got­ten ac­cess to that pa­per, so, for fair­ness, we have to as­sume that all ter­ri­to­ries would have that op­tion to see. We’re not say­ing that every­one did, but that’s the as­sump­tion that you have to take.”

Man­ning said the breach was still be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the au­thor­i­ties.

CSEC re­sults are ex­pect­ed to be re­leased on Au­gust 24 as the coun­cil is still re­ceiv­ing SBA marks. This date raised an­oth­er con­cern about uni­ver­si­ty and schol­ar­ship ap­pli­ca­tions since the se­mes­ter is ex­pect­ed to start in late Au­gust. Man­ning ad­vised par­ents and stu­dents to reach out to rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the uni­ver­si­ties who will work hand in hand with CXC.

The CXC di­rec­tor al­so men­tioned that pupils in Trinidad who missed their Math­e­mat­ics Pa­per I ex­am­i­na­tion in June due to flood­ing would have done a make up on­line ex­am­i­na­tion.